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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Exodus 6:1-9
Well, this morning we begin Exodus chapter 6. As we read, we'll be looking at verses 1 through 9, and we're continuing something we began just this past week. We spoke of knowing the Lord, and particularly knowing the Lord by His righteous judgment.
That was the focus last Sunday. Knowing the Lord as righteous judge, that's a good thing that needs to be recovered. As we read from Psalm 9, the Lord is known by the judgment that He executes. Knowing that the Lord's righteous judgment is our prospect, that drives our obedience, that drives our efforts to serve Him, that drives our hope, it drives our worship, it drives our joy if we're thinking about it rightly through the lens of the gospel.
And so that was our focus last week, knowing the Lord. Now this morning as we begin these first nine verses, we see that God is answering the complaint of Moses by revealing Himself more fully to Moses.
And again, He's answering the heart cry of the Israelites by revealing Himself and His purpose more fully to the Israelites. And so our focus on knowing the Lord this morning will begin by considering the revelation.
Of God.
We'll do that in two parts, and then we'll close with verse 9 and some reflections on why Moses and the Israelites struggle to heed the Word of God, and how we also struggle to heed the Word of God and what we can do about that struggle.
So that's our focus this morning. First thing we see beginning in verse 1 is the emphasis on God as the covenant-keeping.
God.
The Lord said to Moses, now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. With a strong hand He will let them go. With a strong hand He will drive them out of His land. And God spoke to Moses and said to him, I am the Lord.
I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by My name the Lord, that is Yahweh, I was not known to them. I have also established My covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage in which they were strangers.
And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered My covenant. So chapter 4 closed with the great revelation of God's plan flowing from chapter 3, the revelation of God's name, Yahweh, to Moses, and then His plan to redeem the Israelites with His mighty hand.
And that outflow between chapters 3 and 4 closed out chapter 4 with the whole congregation of Israel seeing the signs and hearing the testimony of Moses, which was the testimony of the Word of God, bowing their heads in worship.
And when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel, that He looked upon their affliction, they bowed their heads in worship. So that was the close of chapter 4. Last week we looked at chapter 5, and chapter 5 opened with the great showdown, the initial confrontation between Pharaoh and the people, making bricks without straw, an impossible task for them to both gather and meet the quota as it was before.
And it ended with the people rejecting Moses and his prophecy of God's Word, and also grumbling in this outcry against Moses, the Lord judge you, they said. And then of course, the end of chapter 5 is Moses himself crying out to the Lord, why have you sent me?
Why have you allowed this to be? And chapter 6 begins here, as we just read, with the Lord's response. And again, I want you to notice, Moses took his doubts to the right place. It's not a good look on a leader to have doubt rather than faith, but where there's doubt, and believers often have times and periods of doubt in their walk, it's a good thing for them to take those doubts to the Lord.
And we read at the end of chapter 5, Moses returned to the Lord. He gave his doubtful outcry to the Lord. And so chapter 6 begins with the Lord's response, and please notice, the Lord was not angered by Moses expressing his doubt.
We have not a word of sharp rebuke. We don't even have the slightest hint of a rebuke. The Lord, rather, responds with encouragement and even with hope. And drawing from this emphasis last week of God as the righteous judge, again, part of that hope is the fact that there is a coming judgment against Pharaoh.
Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. So God even uses the fact that he's a righteous judge to encourage the heart of Moses. You will see what I will do if you wait by faith patiently for the coming day.
At this moment in time, Pharaoh is refusing to let go of the Hebrew slaves, not even for three days' journey. But soon he will not only let them go, the Lord says, he will drive them out. There's some ambiguity about what strong hand is in view here.
With a strong hand he will let them go, that's probably Yahweh's strong hand. With a strong hand he will drive them out, that's probably Pharaoh's strong hand, driving the Hebrew slaves out of his land when at this point in time he won't let them go for a three-day journey.
So notice what God is doing in these early verses of chapter 6. He's renewing Moses' focus. He's renewing Moses' conviction. He's renewing Moses' call. The Lord is renewing Moses' focus, conviction, and call.
And how does he do this? He does this by affirming his plan, the fact that judgment is coming. But also, and perhaps most importantly, he does this by reminding Moses of who he is. How does God renew Moses' focus, conviction, and call?
He reminds Moses of who he is.
I am the Lord.
I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I have established my covenant. I have heard the groaning of my people. I have remembered my purpose for such a time as this. So the whole key to this renewal of Moses' focus, conviction, and calling is the reassertion of the identity of God, the self-revelation of God.
Do you notice that pattern? We had it in chapter 3. The self-revelation of God was the commission of Moses. It gave Moses a focus he had not had before. It gave Moses a burning conviction he did not possess before.
It called Moses to confront Pharaoh and lead his people. And now the Lord is renewing that, and he does it in the same way. He reminds Moses of what he told him in chapter 3.
Moses was deeply discouraged. He was pruned by the rejection of his people. It was bad enough to be rejected by Pharaoh, but to be rejected by his own. And in that discouragement, his eyes began to turn away from God's plan, and in turning away from God's plan, he forgot what God had promised to do, and with that, he even began to lose sight of the Lord himself.
What better response is there when believers are discouraged and full of doubt than this? To be reminded of who the Lord is and what the Lord has promised. God is renewing Moses in this very way. We are renewed by knowing the Lord.
So that's the main emphasis that comes across in chapters 4 and 5. The confrontation with Pharaoh leads to the reply, who is the Lord?
I don't know Yahweh.
Neither will I respond to Him. Neither will I obey His Word. And here, God is reminding Moses, you know who I am, and you know My Word, and you must be renewed in the very things I have called you to.
So in our own strength, we're limited. We cannot accomplish what God wants to do in and through us. But knowing Him, we can run without growing weary, walk without growing faint. We know the Lord by His own revelation.
Paul says in 2 Timothy 1,. Nevertheless, I'm not ashamed, for I know who I have believed. How can Paul run without growing weary? How can Paul minister as the offscouring of the world, as the scum of the earth, and not be ashamed?
Well, he tells us, I'm not ashamed because I know who I have believed. And that's what God is doing for Moses. Moses, who is it that you believe? Whose word are you listening to? Whose promise are you trusting in?
Look at the rehearsing of God's promises. I appear to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It's said here, it's repeated again in verse 8. And so this Hebrew emphasis, right? Emphasis by repetition. He's saying, Moses, I am from beginning.
I am, the great I am, the one who appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, just as I have appeared to you. I was with them, making them promises that now you will behold the fulfillment of. In other words, in saying, I appeared to them, he says, I'm patient, not absent.
I'm long-suffering, not aloof. I have been from the beginning, and my promise is sure, though with me a day may be as a thousand years, my promise will be fulfilled. I have established my covenant, he says.
This is all the hope and stay of a believer, that God has established His covenant. Please come tonight to SLBC. We're beginning of God's covenant, chapter 7. We're talking about some of these very things.
It's all of our hope and stay as believers, that God has established a covenant. By Himself, He has sworn it. It will be fulfilled by His own name, according to His own will. Therefore, we can't jeopardize it as believers.
With all of our sins and all of our failures, with our doubts and discouragements like the Israelites, even in their great failure, they cannot thwart the covenantal promise of God. Why? I've heard their groaning, he says.
And in hearing it, I've remembered my covenant. Of course, not that he's ever forgotten it, but it's a way of saying I'm about to act. Genesis 15, of course, we saw the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob swear this very thing, that the Israelites would be in a land that did not belong to them, serving as slaves in the affliction of that bondage for 400 years.
And that after 400 years, God would bring them out and bring them into a land as their own possession. And now that time has come. Four centuries have gone by. God's promise has endured. Dozens of generations have laid down across the time between that promise and this fulfillment.
Think about that just for a moment. Dozens of generations were born into and buried across the time between the promise and the fulfillment. It's a microcosm of our great hope for the Lord as righteous judge.
Thousands upon thousands of generations have laid down from birth to burial between the promise and the fulfillment. God is patient, not absent. God is long-suffering, not aloof. He has not forgotten.
No, he has remembered his covenant. And so we see God is renewing Moses' focus, his conviction, his call. But also we see moving forward to verse 6 and following, God is answering his people's need. God is answering his people's desire.
And God is answering his people's hope. Therefore, say to the children of Israel,.
I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will rescue you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, with great judgments. I will take you as my people, and I will be your God.
Then you shall know I am the Lord, your God, who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I will give it to you as a heritage.
So we have a four-fold repetition of this great I am statement from chapter three, verse 14 and 15. I am the Lord, he says to Moses. And then he says again, I am the Lord. And say this to the Israelites.
And then he unfolds the promises, and he closes with I am the Lord. And between that, what we would call an inclusio of the self-revelation of God, you have seven I will statements. This is all perfect symmetry.
The four-fold I am, the seven-fold I will. God is in complete control, exercising His sovereignty. Therefore, say, the commission hasn't changed. Moses is being renewed to it. Moses is to go and speak to Pharaoh, but now Moses is also to speak to the Israelites.
He must shepherd them through their discouragement. He must shepherd them through the judgments of God in the land. He must shepherd them through the wilderness in their grumbling and murmuring. He must be their shepherd.
This all should have been clear to Moses from chapter three. It's not like we're in chapter 30. We're in chapter three, and now we're in chapter six. Two chapters, not a lot of time has passed. He left Midian, hugged his brother, then he got to Egypt.
Why would all of this need to be rehearsed so quickly? Old Testament critics, something that was almost impossible to overthrow for conservative scholars for about the past century, maybe a century and 20 years, was what we call redaction criticism, and particularly what's known as the J-DEP theory.
I won't go into this, but J-D-E-P. And the higher critics in Old Testament scholarship basically said, we can ascertain four different sources in the Pentateuch, and we've named them each accordingly, J-D-E-P.
J would be the Yahwist, D would be the Deuteronomist, E would be the Elohist, and P would be the priestly. And they say there's different clues in the text and different emphasis in the text that show there's these four different historical sources within the Pentateuch, so they reject the idea of Mosaic authorship, and basically there's editors that have redacted and compiled these sources so that instead of privileging one, they've compiled them in a way that it's still evident what stream or what emphasis you're getting, and it's sort of cobbled together into a narrative.
Thankfully, conservative pushback has poked a lot of holes in that theory, seeing it's pretty much on stilt up in a cloud and doesn't have a lot of concrete evidence behind it, it ends up being entirely subjective.
But the point here is, with chapter six, the repetition is so close to chapter three, they use this as one of their primary examples. Oh, here we have an alternative account. This is a different account of chapter three, and we have some redactor putting it together.
It's far too close that it would be necessary for Moses or the Israelites to be reminded of these things. Well, I think these scholars have a problem of sitting at their desk for too long, because as a believer, I know, a few chapters away, I often need to be reminded of what the Lord has said and what the Lord will do.
And I think Moses needed to be reminded after he was rejected by his people, off the heels of having been embraced by his people, he needed to be reminded of who the Lord is and what the Lord promised to do.
We all suffer from this as believers, you know. I would call it the amnesia of discouragement. The amnesia of discouragement. As soon as we're discouraged, we have spiritual amnesia.
Who is the Lord?
What did He promise? Just like the Israelites and just like Moses, why have you even sent me? Why is this happening to me? How could things happen in this way? This is the worst possible time for all of this to happen.
Even though God had already said everything that was going to happen, and indeed it was happening. It's the amnesia of discouragement. And what is the remedy for the amnesia, or the forgetfulness of discouragement?
It's the Lord Himself. It's the promises that God has made. We need to be reminded. Therefore say to the children of Israel, I am the Lord. This was the answer to Moses' discouragement in verses one through five, and now this will be the answer to the people's discouragement in verses six through eight.
We see that God is answering His people's need, His people's desire, His people's hope. And notice how He does that. Verse six, I will bring you out, He says. God's people had been forced into a miserable and grueling task.
They had already been crying out for centuries, but now more than ever, they are crying out. And what are they crying out for? The very thing Pharaoh refuses to give them. They're crying out for rest.
Stop breaking our bones and rending our spines and wearing down our fingers.
Just give us rest.
Rest is what they needed. Rest was the one thing they wouldn't get from Pharaoh. And so God says, in my judgment,.
Rest is what I will give you.
You will have rest when I exercise my judgment upon Pharaoh. And so it is with us today. We've come to the one who says, are you groaning? Are you weary? Are you heavy laden? Come to me, I will give you rest for your souls.
The one thing this world cannot give the afflicted believer is the very thing that God promises to give to His people. Come to me, I will give you rest for your souls. I will rescue you, God says. Please notice the emphasis there.
This is part of the I will statements, not I will airdrop some instructions for you to use to be able to rescue yourself. I will send you some links to YouTube videos that you can practice on learning how to be delivering and creating your own rest.
He doesn't give them suggestions. He doesn't promise them that if they work really diligently at the end of their long struggle, they might find freedom. I will rescue you, God says. I am the one who is going to rescue you.
You cannot rescue yourself. Pharaoh will not budge. In my judgment, I will rescue you. So it is with God's people today. We read in Colossians, have you gotten this far in your memorization? He has delivered us.
He has delivered us. He has rescued us from the power of darkness, conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son. God is the one who has delivered. God is the one who will rescue. He says, I will redeem you.
Again, this remarkable word. It becomes so significant later in the Scriptures. One of the key words to understand what the cross of Jesus accomplishes on our behalf. Redemption. Clearly in the context of slavery, such an important word.
Slaves could be redeemed with a price. Slavery was purchased so that liberation could follow. And here it speaks to much more than Israel being redeemed from their slavery in Egypt. It speaks to the fall into sin.
It speaks to the miserable bondage of the curse. And so it is today, we know as we read with Peter, we were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.
Galatians 3 .13. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. Verse seven, I will take you as My people. And with that, I will be your God. The Lord is not just going to rescue His people.
He's not going to purchase their freedom and then dust off their shoulders and pat their back and say, well, on your way now.
Do as you will.
He will not abandon them to themselves. This redemption will not lead to some aimless autonomy. But with this redemption, God promises a holy adoption. You will be My people. I will be your God. This is anticipating Exodus 19.
So it is with His people today. We're not on our own when we've been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. That blood has purchased us. It's made us one with Him. It's adopted us. We are now joint heirs with our Savior.
Why?
We were bought with a price. If you've never understood the depth of your slavery as an unbeliever, if you've never come to that point in your experience of the grace of God where you recognize you knew in your bones you were utterly unable to free yourself, how could you ever understand that price?
How could you ever respond in awe and in love to the one who paid that price? If you haven't felt the slavery and you haven't known what it is to be unable to free yourself, you think very little of the price that was paid.
You don't even recognize the bondage that you're in.
What does Jesus say?
He was forgiven much, loves much. And how could you devote yourself in service to the Redeemer, being taken as His people, serving Him as your Lord? If you have not known, if you have not felt, if you have not wondered at the shackles of that bondage falling off by grace and you being adopted into the beloved, God choosing you as His dwelling place.
We're the temple of the living God.
This is what it means for God to take us as His people.
We become His dwelling place.
As God has said, 2 Corinthians 6, I will dwell in them. I will be their God and they shall be my people. Verse eight, I will bring you into the land. And this, of course, in Genesis 15 was the great resolution to that dark and horrible sleep that fell upon Abram when God revealed the affliction that would come upon his children.
Though they would be brought into slavery, God would bring them out. Salvation always involves a bringing out and a bringing in. Salvation is being brought out of bondage, brought out of the curse and brought into rest, brought into the land.
Salvation is bringing out and bringing in. So it is with God's people today. We're brought out of our slavery to sin, brought into the very inheritance of Abraham. Do you remember in Matthew 8 when Jesus heard from the centurion whose servant was sick?
And the centurion said,.
You don't even need to come into my house. I too am a man under authority. I know what it's like to have a chain of command. In fact, if you simply will that my servant be healed, that servant will be healed.
Though you stand here far from him. And what does Jesus say in response to that? Matthew 8 says, Jesus marveled. I haven't found such faith in all of Israel. He said, the very people that actually have the testimony of God, the people who ought to know because they have examples endlessly before them.
They ought to know what genuine faith looks like. And he says, I haven't found a faith like this in all of Israel. I say to you, many will come from East and West and they will sit down with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.
We're brought out of the curse of sin, brought into the land of Abraham's inheritance, brought into the kingdom of heaven, where we sit and feast with our father of the faith. I will give it to you, he says, as a heritage.
We're rescued, redeemed, brought safely to that city whose builder and maker is God, never to be dispossessed, never to be dislocated. It's our rightful heritage.
Because we are heirs, joint heirs. With Christ Jesus.
And what holds all of these promises together?
Not you are my people, but I am the Lord. It opens these promises, it closes them out. This will be God's doing, not man's, not of us. I am the Lord, the great I am, the Alpha, the Omega, the First, the Last, the Beginning, and the End.
I have remembered my covenant. Every doubt that afflicts the believer would vanish, A .W. Pink says, if faith but grasped the fact that it is the great I am who makes the promise. So again, God is answering his people's need, answering their desire, answering their hope.
Where is Moses' faith to rest? In the very promises of God, who the great I am himself has remembered. Where is our faith to rest? In the promises of the unchanging, immutable, covenant-keeping God. That's where our faith is to rest.
This is how we hold fast our confession of hope without wavering. He who is promised is faithful. And so we need to often study and rehearse the promises of God. If we would find the comfort of God in times of great need.
Let me ask you this morning, are you wrestling to know God's purpose for your life? Are you wrestling to understand why things have gone the way they've gone? Why things are currently the way they are?
Why you are facing the trials that you are currently facing, being tested in the ways that you're being tested, wondering if things will fail, if things will turn out more negatively or poorly or come back to haunt you or bite you in the end.
Take a close look at these verses. Be still, know the Lord, know who he is, know what he has promised. And then meditate on those promises. Hide those promises in your heart. You see, like the Israelites, we have been giving exceedingly precious promises.
Our problem is, like the Israelites, we often forget these promises. And when the word comes to us, the discouragement is so great and overwhelming, we cannot heed them. And that's verse nine. Moses spoke these things to the children of Israel.
It had an effect on Moses. But it did not have an effect on the children of Israel. Moses spoke these things to the children of Israel, but they did not heed Moses. Because of anguish of spirit and cruel bondage, they did not heed Moses.
That's a word we don't often use. It means to pay careful attention to. To find resolution with. To find the answer in. To listen intently toward. They could not find resolution. They could not listen intently.
They could not receive the word of God as it was spoken by Moses to them. And what, according to verse nine, prevented them from being able to receive the word of God and be comforted and encouraged, refocused, recommitted?
Anguish of spirit and cruel bondage. Hebrew for anguish of spirit here is literally shortness of breath, shortness of spirit. It's almost this image of one who's been crying out in anguish, and their cry is so sharp, so painful, that they are panting and they can't even catch their breath anymore.
I see this all the time with toddlers. You know, when there's a spill or an accident or they fall off the bunk bed, and you hear the long intake, and the seconds start rolling by, and they can't catch their breath because the pain is so sharp.
And that was Pharaoh's intention all along. And remember, Pharaoh is sort of the placeholder as this serpentine devastator of God's people. The, as it were, power and principality behind which animating Pharaoh is against God's purposes and against God's promises for His people.
And so we see Pharaoh's cruelty has this intended effect. I will make them cry out in such agony that the word of God cannot be heard and received by them. I will make their anguish and their bondage and their misery so great that their ears will be deaf to the promises of God.
And I want you to know that serpentine power and principality has the same intention for you this morning that you would not heed the word of God because of this shortness of breath, because of this anguish of spirit.
Centuries of slavery had made the people of God think like slaves rather than act like children of Abraham. They were in a deep rut of expecting nothing but misery and having for a long time not experienced something like deliverance.
And rather than pressing on for 30 years in the wilderness like their father in the faith, they did not act in faith. They acted in groaning and sought to go back, slinking back to their chains. Pharaoh had become bigger in their eyes than the Lord.
The Hebrew foremen were not upset at the evil taskmasters. They were not even upset at Pharaoh behind them. They were upset at the prophets bearing the word of God. Such was the mentality of these slaves.
Christians may often find themselves in this very place, hard to trust in God, believing not that he will fulfill his promise, but rather they have to do what they can to get back to their former slavery because things are only getting worse.
Christ, David Marsh says, Christ, the divine emancipator, comes to men who have long worn the inherited chain of bondage to sin. You see the transmission of the fall's curse, just like the transmission of slavery generation by generation among God's people.
They have become so habituated to the hopes, the desires, the pleasures, the expectations of their life, they can give no heed to him who offers to break their chain, bring them forth into glorious liberty.
Listen to this.
Men, made in the image of God, endowed with the fearful gift of immortality, capable of becoming companions with archangels, consenting to be caged and fettered by cares and pleasures and pursuits that bind them to the earth and make them slaves of the very things they despise.
That is what happens when anguish or spirit prevents us from heeding the promises in person of the Lord. Establish my footsteps in your word, Psalm 119 says. Do not let any sin have dominion over me. The word of God is the answer to this dominion, to this discouragement, to this deafness and inability to receive the comfort and hope of God's word.
And we see three things with that. The first point I would make is this. We know the Lord by heeding his word. We know the Lord by heeding his word. The Israelites are not heeding the word because of this great pain and misery and discouragement.
And for this very reason, they cannot know the Lord. How can they know the Lord, know his promises, if they don't know him by his word? The very thing that Moses has embraced once again by heeding the word that God has spoken to him is the way that Moses not only knows the Lord, but presses forward in great confidence and boldness.
For that same reason, the Israelites cannot move forward. They would go slinking back to slavery because they did not heed the word of God. We know the Lord by heeding his word.
The point made last week,.
When we attempt to speak in the Lord's name, evil things are done against us. And when evil is done in response, when we encounter opposition from the world, rather than finding blessing and peace, we often find conflict.
And with conflict leads to discouragement. And in that discouragement, we have the trial, the test, the need to hold fast to God's word. If all else fails, holding fast to every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
The Israelites did not, indeed, could not hold fast to God's word. They lost faith. When we don't press on in faith because of discouragement leading to forgetfulness, when we fail to hold fast to what we've been told, we will not be able to receive the comfort and hope of God's word.
God told Moses and the Israelites in chapter three and in chapter four, Pharaoh will not hear you, he will not let you go. Moses and God's people said, got it. Okay, we get it.
And then they went to Pharaoh,.
And as God said, Pharaoh did not let them go, and they throw their hands up, and they say, we can't believe this is happening. Why would this be happening to us?
Does that sound familiar?
God's word says, you will have trouble in this life. We say, got it, Roger. We're gonna have trouble in this life as believers. And then we step outside the door, and trouble comes, and we throw our hands up, and we say, why are we having trouble?
I don't get it.
What strange thing has this fiery trial come about? When scripture says, don't be surprised, this is the norm in the life of a believer. But instead of being encouraged by holding fast to the word of God, the discouragement prevents us from receiving the word of God.
So holding fast to the revelation is holding on to faith. Holding fast to God's word is walking by faith, and not by sight. James Orr says, this is truly the explanation of every difficulty when it comes to God's providence.
It is not God who is at fault. It is our own short-sightedness. We do not perceive the ends that He has in view, nor how wonderfully He is working patiently toward those very ends by these present circumstances which confuse us.
We know the Lord by heeding His word. Martin Lloyd-Jones said, and I love how personable he can speak. Martin Lloyd-Jones said, the Bible comes to us exactly where we are. It speaks to us in the very position we are at this moment.
It always insists upon doing that. It says, I'm interested in you. I want to talk to you about yourself. That's what God is doing in Exodus 6, one through eight. I know where you are. I have heard the groaning of my children.
I know what you need.
Here is my word. It's addressing you exactly where you are. I'm interested in you. I want to talk to you about yourself and about what you're facing and about what you need based on what I will do.
Let me ask you,.
What prevents you from receiving it in this way? What keeps you from reading God's word in this way? A little thought experiment. What if this week, you went to a normal checkup at your doctor's office and based on something they saw and some blood work they did, they broke the unutterable news that you had this major health crisis and the purview was grave.
The chance of pulling through unscathed was very slim. Radical measures, immediate measures would need to be taken just to have a shot. Let me ask you, would that prognosis shape at all the way that you approached God's word?
How you read God's word? How you applied God's word into your life, into your heart, into your thinking? How often you did that? If it had that effect, what prevents you from receiving God's word in that way now?
Why do we not read God's word as those who are about to die? As an implanted word that is able to save our souls and bid us to peace and warmth and joy even in the midst of affliction and misery. Why do we not receive the word of God in this way now?
We see, secondly, the reason in verse nine. Anguish of spirit prevents us from heeding God's word in this way. When God's word would be a lifeline, when God's word would be the cure, discouragement and misery is so profound our ears are unable to hear it.
Our hearts are unable to be softened toward it. Anguish of spirit prevents us from heeding God's word. Charles Spurgeon, if you have some time, it would be an encouragement to you perhaps to read his sermon from this part of Exodus chapter six.
He titled it, To the Saddest of the Sad. It's just a great gospel message. He preached it toward the end of his life in 1888. And he said at the beginning of this sermon, there are hundreds of reasons why men reject the gospel.
We don't have time to go into them. If someone wants to beat a dog, they can always find a stick and if someone wants to reject Christ, they can always find a reason for doing it. I wish that man was less cunning, making excuses to refuse the Lord Jesus.
But among all the reasons that I've ever heard, if there is one that I have sympathy toward, it is this one, that some will not receive Christ because they are so full of anguish, so crushed in their spirit, they can't even find strength to entertain a hope that salvation could come to them.
And it is to their sad case that I speak. I think I can speak to their case if God helps me because I have felt the same. I do not, I do remember when I could not believe even Jesus himself because of the anguish of my spirit and therefore coming to you as one who has worn these chains, I speak to those who are still in chains, you see?
Anguish of spirit prevents us from receiving the word of God. The sorrows that ought to awaken a longing for God's grace, sometimes for some people become the very obstacle to receiving God's grace. Calvin, in his commentary said, it is far too common for people.
Common, he said, the more they are afflicted, the more they harden themselves against God's help. Israel was affected by this disease. When so kind an invitation of God was thrown from their deaf ears because anguish took possession of their heart.
And since it's natural for us to be afflicted by grief, let us learn from this example to struggle that our minds should escape from sorrows so far at least as to be able to receive grace in a time of need.
Listen, he says, there is no greater curse than to be rendered dull and deaf to the promises of God.
Now that struggle against sorrow,.
It may come from personal affliction in your life, something that you're experiencing bodily. Maybe your spiritual state and something you're struggling against. It may come externally rather than inwardly.
It may come from some injustice that you're dealing with, some rift in relationships, some oppression that you're facing. It doesn't really matter whether within or without or to what degree, this kind of discouragement can render us deaf to the comfort and hope of God.
So how then can we respond? Third and last, we respond by the very blueprint we have in Exodus 6, one through eight, the very thing that we've been getting at. We catch our breath by heeding God's word.
We catch our breath in the midst of that anguish by heeding God's word. Growing and persevering in the Christian life requires learning how to breathe. Let me explain what I mean. I've already said that this phrase anguish of spirit is literally shortness of breath.
The discouragement is so sharp that the lungs are sort of frozen. No one is panting and can't catch their breath. And in that panic, which is just sort of a cold, dull discouragement, they will not hear the word of God.
How can we catch our breath? Charles Simeon says, and I think this is very good advice. First and foremost, beware of neglecting your spiritual state.
While you are well.
This is very good.
Beware of neglecting your spiritual state.
And the expectation that when distress comes, it will make you religious. I have time to play, time to gamble, time to put off, time to refuse, time to reject. When the day of trouble comes, then I will become pious and holy.
Then I will turn to the Lord and cry out for His great rescue.
No, you will not.
There is no truth in nature more certain than this. The time of health and happiness is the best, perhaps the only time, to cleave to Christ. Make our calling and election sure. Simeon says, the mind may be heavenly without sore bondage, and it may be earthly with it.
If you resist the Spirit of God until affliction comes, affliction may come without the Spirit of God. And so, they are happiest and safest who give their brightest days to Christ so that when the dark days come, the light of His life continues to shine upon their hearts.
Do you see? Part of how we catch our breath is by learning how to breathe when we can breathe. Learning how to heed and receive while we can heed and receive. Learning how to study and meditate and hide and enact and not be hearers only,.
But doers of the Word of God.
So that we don't deceive ourselves. That is what we're getting at. This is how we catch our breath. God has breathed out His Word in such a way that we're meant to breathe it in. God breathes out His inspired Word and we breathe it in, building up the capacity of that Word in our lungs, in our life, so that when dark days come,.
The Word of Christ is still dwelling.
Richly within the Christian and it becomes our hope and our health and our peace. Something else that James 1 .21 encourages us to do. Receive with meekness the implanted Word. I just want to pause there for a moment, but there's more that James has to say about receiving the Word of God.
Catching our breath upon the very breath of God. First, notice that James says the Word is something that is both received and yet already implanted in a believer.
Notice that.
Receive with meekness the implanted Word. So the prospect, what needs to be done, is you need to continually receive the Word of God, but at the same time, that Word of God is already implanted in you.
How do we make sense of this? It's vital to the point I'm trying to make. First, let me say this. God's Word is often described as seed. 1 Corinthians 3, Matthew 13, as we'll see here in a moment, 1 Peter 1, 1 Thessalonians 2.
God's Word is described as seed, and the effect of God's Word is described as fruit. God Himself is said to implant His Word within His people. I will cause my Word to be put in your heart. His law written upon our heart.
God Himself implants the Word in His people. 1 Peter 1, 23. This is how the believer is born again. Having been born again through the agency of the Word of God, by the efficacy of the Spirit of God. Having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible seed, that is, through the Word of God, which lives and abides forever.
Verse 25, now this is the Word by which the gospel was preached to you. So we have the implanted Word of God, and 1 Peter says, this is the seed that was planted by God in you, that led to your new birth.
So God implants His Word within you. This was the gospel that was preached to you. This is the gospel that was the good news by which you were made a new creation in Christ Jesus. And this implanted Word was not mere human communication, but rather God-breathed implantation.
And it's a working Word for our Thessalonians 2. When you received the Word of God, which you heard from us, you welcomed it, not as the Word of men, but as it really is, the Word of God, which effectively works in you.
So the Word is like seed, and that seed can't but germinate and sprout and bear fruit. And Paul says it's effectively working in you. Notice that it's in you who believe. This is not how unbelievers feel about the Word of God.
If you're sitting here this morning and the Word of God is but drudgery to you, and this is not your experience of the Word of God, if the Word of God to you is as plain as any dead letter, it is not the fault of the Word of God, it is by reason of the fact that you are dead in trespass and sin.
The Word of God is a dead letter, a dead word, to those who are dead in trespass and sin. The Word of God is living and active to those who have been made alive by the Spirit of God. It's a living word to those who have life.
It's a dead word to those who are dead. The Word of God is this way because it's not implanted in anyone, but those who have been born again. It's just empty word that cannot be received, that cannot germinate and sprout in someone's life, because it has not been planted there by God.
So we're assuming now the exhortation is two believers who have been born again through the Word of God that was implanted within them and is now working effectively in their lives, and what does 1 Peter say?
Therefore, this is chapter two, verse one, laying aside all malice, all deceit, all hypocrisy, all envy, all evil speaking, as newborn babes desire the pure milk of the Word, so that you may grow thereby.
Well, this too is part of how we catch our breath. How do we receive the Word of God? How do we heed the Word of God? Well, if that Word has been implanted, we also need to lay aside malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy.
These are the things that make it impossible.
To receive the Word of God.
James 1, 21 says the same thing, same verb. Therefore, lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted Word, which is able to save your souls. So if you're a believer, the Word is near you, in your mouth, in your heart.
That is the Word of faith, which we preach. It is implanted, you see, but it still must be received. This is the key to understanding how, in that anguish, in that discouragement, we can catch our breath.
We already have the Word implanted within us. Now we need to lay aside all that entangles us so readily and receive it, so that there's a correspondence between the external ministry of the Word and the internal presence of the Word.
That's the key.
The implanted Word is like the believer's lungs. The external Word is like the air that we need to breathe in order to live. The implanted Word has given us lungs. It's internal and native to us as born-again people of God, but it's not natural when discouragement or pain enters into our lives to be able to breathe.
We have shortness of breath, just like the Israelites. When a woman goes into labor pains, what do all the nurses say? Endlessly. I heard it 400 times.
Breathe! Breathe!
You're not breathing because of the pain, because of the misery.
You're frozen.
You have the lungs. You have what you need internally, but you're not receiving what you need externally, whether by reading or preaching or testimony or meditation. Receive the Word of God with meekness, laying aside all these other things that would prevent you.
Breathe! Growing and persevering in the Christian life requires this very thing, that you learn how to breathe through discouragement and depression. Catching your breath by breathing the very air of God's Word.
This, at times in the life of the believer, comes as emergency CPR by the Lord Himself. On our last ropes, unable to gasp for air. It's a wonder to me that the word for spirit is the same word for breath.
The breath of God comes and forces His life-giving power into the lungs of our soul so that we have breath, that we may live. We have the implanted Word, but we still must live by every Word that proceeds from the mouth, from the breath of God.
What is keeping you from doing that this morning? Are you receiving God's Word as if you're catching your breath? Are you learning how to breathe while you can breathe in these days of good and plenty?
When you're not facing perhaps utter discouragement, when you're not caught in cruel bondage crying out with shortness of breath, take Simeon's advice. If you're waiting for the Spirit of God to come with affliction, affliction will come without the Spirit of God.
But perhaps you are actually discouraged and you are the one gasping for air. Well, be encouraged by these verses. Look at how God uses His Word.
And breathe.
By His Word, He renews your focus. He gives you a conviction. He renews your calling. He's answering your greatest needs. He's sympathetic to your great desire. And He's giving you a hope and a future everlasting.
By the Word of God, as it's breathed in and corresponds to the implanted Word within you, you are given faith to walk, not by sight. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Let's pray. Breathe on us, breath of God.
Make us holy and true. Make us willing and able. We recognize, Lord, that we would have no life, no lungs by which to breathe unless You had implanted Your Word to dwell richly within us. You have given us the Word that is Your Son, and by His Spirit, we're able to breathe upon the very breath of God and find our life within it.
I pray if there's anyone in our midst, Lord, who's caught in that cruel bondage, unable to breathe,.
Whether they know You.
And have received this implanted Word, may they receive it now. If they're a believer, may they receive it with meekness. May all of Your people in this body lay aside all that prevents them, all malice and envy, all deceit and hypocrisy, all filthiness, Lord.
May we breathe the breath of God, find strength and health and peace in learning how to breathe so that Your light may shine upon our hearts when the days grow dark and our fears and our trials discourage us.
These things we ask in Your Son's name.
Amen.