The Old Testament reading is Exodus 5:1-21, and this is the inerrant and infallible word of God. 

“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 burdens’. 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 sacrifice to our God. Let heavier work be laid on the men, that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words’.

So the taskmasters and the foremen of the people went out and said to the people, ‘Thus says Pharaoh, I will not give you straw. Go and get your straw yourselves, wherever you can find it. But your work will not be reduced in the least. So the people were scattered throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw’. The taskmasters were urgent, saying, complete your work, your daily task, each day, as when there was straw. And the foremen of the people of Israel, whom Pharaoh’s taskmasters had said over them, were beaten, and were asked, ‘Why have you not done all your tasks of making bricks today and yesterday, as in the past’? 

Then the foreman of the people of Israel came and cried to Pharaoh, ‘Why do you treat your servants like this? No straw is given to your servants, yet they say to us, make bricks. And behold, your servants are beaten, but the fault is in your own people’. But he said, ‘You are idle, you are idle. That is why you say, let us go and sacrifice to the Lord. Go now and work. No straw will be given you, but you must still deliver the same number of bricks. The foreman 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 said to them, ‘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’. 

You can keep your place there for the sermon. But first, let’s hear the New Testament reading, which is Romans 6:1-11.

Romans 6, 1 through 11, and then we’ll turn back to Exodus Chapter 5.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died to sin has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. 

The grass withers, the flower fails but the word of our God will stand forever.

One of the last things that Jesus said to his disciples after he was arrested and tried and crucified was this. He said to his disciples, “In the world you will have tribulation”. And of course, these are words that our Lord speaks to us as well as his disciples today. He does not promise us as his followers that we can expect a life of ease and pleasure and comfort. But rather, as Christians, we are to expect in this life some measure of affliction and hardship. 

The apostle Paul, he said the same truth when he said, “Through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God”. And that really is the theme of this passage from Exodus this morning. Although God promised his people Israel that he would bring them out from under their bondage in Egypt, that he would rescue them from their affliction there, the Israelites, they would only reach their destination of the promised land by going through many tribulations.

The specific troubles that we heard from Exodus 5 that the Israelites experienced in Egypt were, of course, unique to the people of God when they were slaves to Pharaoh. However, the things that they suffered are examples or types of the very same kinds of afflictions and tribulations that the people of God have always had to endure living in this fallen world and we can identify three kinds of tribulations that the Israelites suffered here in this passage that we as the people of God today to one degree or another also experience or should expect to experience in this world. First of all, the first tribulation is opposition from an unbelieving world Secondly, the power of sin. And the third tribulation that is pictured for us here is the presence of conflict in the church. So opposition of an unbelieving world, the power of sin, and the presence of conflict in the church. 

First we’ll consider opposition from an unbelieving world. The church suffers from this. At the end of chapter four, and that’s where we left off last Lord’s Day but at the end of chapter four things were looking pretty good for Moses as God’s appointed one to deliver the Israelites out of Egypt. Despite the fact that Moses was afraid that the people of Israel would not listen to him, that they would not believe the message that he would give to them, that the Lord had raised him up to deliver them from their bondage to Egypt, that he would lead them into the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey.  Despite that, despite Moses’ fears that they would not listen, the people of Israel did in fact listen to Moses and they believed. And they even proved their faith in the Lord and their trust in the message that Moses brought to them by bowing down their heads and worshiping God.

And so things were looking not too bad. But the Israelites, if they thought that the way to the promised land from here on out, if it would be smooth sailing, they were in for a very rude awakening. At the beginning of our passage in chapter 5, Moses and Aaron, they go to Pharaoh. They go to him to deliver that message that the Lord gave to them to give to Pharaoh.

And so they say in verse one, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let my people go that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness”. And Pharaoh’s response to that was about as friendly and receptive as you might imagine from this tyrant who ruled his people with an iron fist. He says in verse two, “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”.

So already, here at the very first occasion, when Moses and Aaron speak to Pharaoh, we see the hardness of the heart of Pharaoh, his arrogance, his stubborn refusal to believe the truth of the Word of God that was proclaimed to them by Moses, or proclaimed to him by Moses and Aaron. And there’s something ironic in what Pharaoh says here in his response to Moses and Aaron, if you consider carefully the words that he says. On the one hand, although he doesn’t say it explicitly in so many words, Pharaoh basically claims here that he doesn’t believe in the existence of the Lord, of such a God. Who is the Lord, he says? I’ve never heard of him. I don’t believe in him. As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t exist. 

But on the other hand, Pharaoh is passionately adamant in his assistance that he will not obey the voice of the Lord. That is, the Lord whom he professes, we can infer, the Lord whom he professes not to believe in. If Pharaoh really doesn’t believe in the existence of the Lord, then why is he so worked up about refusing to obey Him? And you see a similar response today on the part of the atheist when it comes to the existence of God. The atheist will deny that there is such a thing as God. He will say, God is a fairy tale. It is a superstitious relic from a bygone era, not fit for our enlightened reason today. God is simply the figment of man’s imagination, a crutch for weak people, and so on and so on.

Basically, the atheist says, “Who is God? I don’t know God. He does not exist”. And yet, at the same time, that same person will become very intense, very passionate in his denial of the truth of God. He will become very adamant that he will never submit to such a God. And that raises the question, why is he so worked up in his opposition to something that he professes does not even exist? And the reason is, the Bible gives us the reason for that. The reason is that even the atheist has, in fact, a true knowledge of the true God. 

The Bible tells us in Romans 1 that all people have received true knowledge of God. All people have been given by God a knowledge of Himself because God reveals Himself to all people in the things that He has made. The unbeliever suppresses that knowledge of the truth of God in his heart, he suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. So he knows the truth, he has true knowledge of God and yet he denies it. He suppresses that truth, yet it is there, deep down it is there. And so for the atheist, his atheism, his denial of God, is not just an abstract intellectual opinion about the question of the existence of God.

Rather, no matter how he may couch it in sophisticated philosophical terms or intellectual terms, his atheism is truly the outward expression of a heart within that is raging against God, that is an act of rebellion against the God whom he knows is the creator of all things and who is his judge. It’s been said that the atheist will say two things about God – “One, I don’t believe in God, and two, I hate him”. And that’s essentially what Pharaoh is saying here in this passage. I have no idea who the Lord is, but I hate him and I will not submit to him. 

Now, Pharaoh’s unbelief, and he gives us a striking picture of the unbelief of man. His unbelief would have been for him just a very serious personal problem were it not for the fact that he was Pharaoh. He was the sovereign king over Egypt and he was the one who ruled the people of Israel and therefore his unbelief was not just a personal problem for Pharaoh but his unbelief meant a tremendous suffering for the people of Israel. When Moses and Aaron came to Pharaoh, Pharaoh did not merely dismiss them as a couple of religious eccentrics, but his response was to ratchet up the intensity of the misery and suffering of the Israelite slaves. And he did this by forcing them to go and to find their own straw in making bricks. And so, Pharaoh’s unbelief became Israel’s problem. It became the source of their misery and affliction in Egypt. 

And here we have a picture of what has been true for the people of God and for the church, for the Christian church ever since the very beginning of the church. And that is Christians have suffered tribulation in this world because so often they have been ruled by people who do not believe in the word of God and whose hearts are hard against the truth of God’s word as that is revealed to us in the scriptures and in Jesus Christ.

If a government, if the rulers of a nation deliberately reject the truth about God and Christ revealed in His Word, then sooner or later, inevitably, they will actively oppose those who do believe in the true God and who seek to serve and worship God as He is made known to us in Christ. It will take place. And the reason for that is because it is an issue of authority. It is a question of authority. Whenever the authority of God is deliberately rejected, then the authority of man must take its place. And rule based on the authority of man, sooner or later, will not tolerate the service and the worship of a competing authority, which is, for us, God. 

And this is exactly what happened here with Pharaoh. At heart, he would not tolerate anyone, God or otherwise, who claimed a greater authority than his over the people of Israel. In his mind, God, the Lord, was not the God of the Israelites, but he was. You’ll notice that Moses and Aaron came to Pharaoh with a message from God, thus says the Lord. And what does Pharaoh do? He sends out his henchmen to the people of Israel with a very different message, “thus says Pharaoh”. And in a modern secular worldview, the highest authority will not be God, but the highest authority will reside with those whoever happened to hold the reins of power at the time. And so the powers that be will say, not “thus says the Lord, but thus says the state, thus says the party, thus says the leader”. 

And so Pharaoh here represents not just the unbeliever, but he represents all human authority and power that exalts itself to the place of God. And again, human power that exalts itself to the place of God must and will oppose anyone that claims the true God, the God of the Bible, is the only God that is to be served and worshipped. Now, we can give thanks and praise to God that, though we know this is true, we personally have not experienced this to the same degree as so many Christians in the history of the Church have experienced it, and as so many Christians in the world today experience it. We have been very blessed to live in a society and a nation in which we have not suffered this degree at least of persecution or opposition from the government or from society, and I pray that we will continue to be so blessed.

However, if God and His providence should ever bring us into a time in which we face more intense opposition or even persecution because of our faith in Christ, let’s not forget, we must remember that suffering opposition for the sake of the gospel is really, historically speaking, the normal state of affairs for the people of God in this world. Listen to what Peter tells us – 1 Peter 4.12, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you”.

Peter’s saying that what is strange is not the fact that you may suffer persecution. What is strange is if you are not suffering opposition in some way. Now, another lesson that we can take from this is what we are to do as the people of God, as the Church, in this world in which there is the unbelief or the opposition of the unbelieving world. The first priority for the Church in this world of sin and unbelief, when there is opposition, our first priority is simply to be the Church, to do what Christ has called us to do, as the Church.

You’ll notice when Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh, You’ll notice that they did not demand of Pharaoh legislation for better working conditions. They did not demand a referendum to recall Pharaoh. They did not protest Pharaoh in asking for higher tariffs on imported bricks. What they insisted on was simply this, that they must go to worship and serve their God.

And in our situation today, living as we are in a society that is increasingly becoming more pagan in character. We must never lose sight of our primary calling as the church and as Christians, and that is to worship and serve the Lord Jesus Christ according to his word. That is what Christ calls us to do. And so, if we are faithful to gather week by week to worship God by faith in Jesus Christ, if we are faithful to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, to believe that gospel, if we are faithful to pray, to pursue holiness, to repent of sin, if we are faithful to love and serve one another out of love for Christ, if we are faithful to instruct our children in the truth of the Christian faith, If by the grace of God we are faithful to pursue these things as the church, as the people of God, this is not only pleasing in the sight of God because this is what He requires of us, but also in the long run, by the Lord’s blessings, I believe we will be far more effective in bringing any kind of genuine change to this world. We would be far more effective in simply being the church in this world than we would be if we were to focus all our energies on whatever happens to be the pressing political or social issues of the day. And so our number one priority today as the people of God was the same priority of the Israelites living under the the yoke of Pharaoh and that is to worship God, to serve the Lord, to worship him according to his word that he gives us and how we are to please him and worship him.  And so, just as Moses and Aaron faced the wrath of Pharaoh and his unbelief, so we as Christians, if we are faithful to God and his word in one degree or another we will face the opposition of unbelief and that is one of the tribulations through which we must enter the kingdom of God. 

A second kind of tribulation that we experience that is pictured for us here in this passage is the power of sin, the power of sin. After Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh, they made their request to sacrifice to the Lord in the wilderness. Pharaoh, in his twisted mind, he reasoned to himself that obviously the problem with these Hebrews is that they were just plain lazy. Never mind the fact that they were literally working like slaves, because they were slaves. Never mind the fact that Pharaoh could see with his very eyes the cities that were being built up with these bricks that the Israelites were making every day. In his mind, the people were idle.

The solution to that problem was to make them work even harder. And so he says to himself, “OK, no more Mr. Nice Guy”. And so he gave the Israelites an impossible burden. From then on, they would no longer provide any straw for the Israelites in making their bricks. But of course, they would have to keep making the same number of bricks every day. The straw in the bricks reinforced the strength of the bricks like we would put rebar in concrete to reinforce that concrete. Apparently, archaeologists have discovered from this time period in Egypt, bricks that actually have straw on them, just like they are described for us here in Exodus. And so from now on, the Israelites would have to find their own straw. They’d have to keep making the same number of bricks every day. But this was too much for the Israelites to bear. It was impossible, humanly impossible. They could not keep making the same number of bricks and find their own straw.  They went out all over the place. They were gathering whatever stubble they could find for straw, but they failed to meet their quota. And since they failed, the foremen of the Israelites, and these foremen were Israelites themselves, they were Jews themselves, they were beaten by their Egyptian taskmasters. And so Pharaoh, in response to Moses and Aaron, not only refuses to let them go to worship the Lord, but he makes their lives all the more miserable.

And we have here, pictured for us, the power of sin as sin exercises dominion and tyranny over the one who is under its power. The Pharaoh here represents the power of sin to enslave, to hold in bondage. and that’s exactly what sin does. Sin exercises a total dominion over a person that is apart from grace, apart from Christ. Just as Pharaoh ruthlessly ruled over his slaves, Jesus teaches us that everyone who commits a sin is a slave to sin. Not just an occasional party to it, not just influenced by it, but everyone who commits sin, which is everybody, is a slave to sin. 

And you can see this in the lives of people. Sometimes this is demonstrated very clearly in the lives of people whose lives are ravaged, destroyed by the power of sin, the bondage that they are held in. You see it in those who are addicted to alcohol or drugs. Their lives literally can be destroyed. You see it in the man who cannot, he cannot stop looking at pornography. You see it in the person who cannot control his anger or her anger. And these may be more obvious examples. But apart from Christ, even the person who seemingly has his life all together, who seems to be in control of himself, even that person is enslaved to one kind of sin or another. It may be something like pride or self-righteousness or something like that. But everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.

And just as the Israelites would have been destroyed by Pharaoh’s bitter yoke, so sin will not lighten its grip on a person until that person is destroyed by the death and the judgment of God that comes upon that person for his sin. That is the condition in which we are born. That is our state as those who inherited sin from Adam. We are born in this world as sinners. And not just sinners, but slaves to sin, bond servants to the power the dominion of sin over us and that’s why the gospel of Jesus Christ is such good news to us because Jesus Christ came in order not just to help us to be better people, not just to give us a little bit of grace so that we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and become moral righteous people, but Jesus came to do what we could not possibly do, and that is to liberate us, to free us from this bondage to sin. 

When the Son of God died upon the cross, he not only took away from you the guilt of sin, so that you are no longer guilty before a holy God, but he also took away from you the power of sin that reigns over you. And so in Christ you have been set free – set free from the dominion of sin. The truth is that Jesus does not give you some kind of absolute freedom from everything, but he makes you his servants. You become a slave to Christ, to serve him. However, that is true freedom. That is true freedom. The only kind of freedom that is genuine freedom is the freedom that God gives us in Jesus Christ that we would serve Christ and be His slaves. That is the freedom that brings joy, that brings life. That is the freedom that fills our hearts, that is true freedom, and that is what Christ came to do for us. And so as Christians we are free from the dominion of sin. However, We have been set free from sin’s enslaving power. Nevertheless, even as believers in this world, we still experience and wrestle with the power of sin. There is still a power that sin can exercise in our hearts, not an enslaving power, but still a power. 

Perhaps we can look at the Israelites as an example, as a picture of what I’m talking about here. I’m looking ahead now in the book of Exodus, but you’ll remember from your own reading of Exodus that when the Israelites were brought out of the land of Egypt and they began to suffer in the wilderness, what did they do? They started to look back to Egypt as though that was where they had it made. They began to complain to God and to Moses that they were better off in Egypt. And so, apparently, The Israelites will look back to this time of abject misery and slavery in Egypt as a time of, “this was the good old days”. And in the very same way, sin can deceive us. Sin can attract us to itself to entice us to return to its sinful ways and habits. It always has that appeal, that attractiveness to us. It promises us freedom and happiness. Well, how do we deal with that? The solution is to remember the truth of what you are in Jesus Christ. You belong to Christ. You are his servant. You have died with him in his death. You have been raised up with him in his resurrection. So you are a new creature in Christ Jesus.

You are no longer a slave to sin, but you belong to Christ. Romans 6:13-14 do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness for sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace sin no longer has dominion over you but you have been raised up with Christ to belong to Him and the more that you have this understanding of who you are in Christ, the more that this is absorbed into your heart and your mind, the less attractive and appealing a sin will be for you.

And so the Israelites, they were in bondage to Pharaoh and his cruel tyranny, and this is a picture again for us as the people of God, of the power of sin, and that that is one of the tribulations that we must go through in order or on our way to entering into the kingdom of God. 

The third kind of tribulation that the Israelites suffered was conflict among them and often we have to endure conflict in the church. Maybe the saddest part of this whole chapter is what happens after the Israelite foremen seek to appeal to Pharaoh Israelite foremen, they go to Pharaoh and of course they get nowhere with him. He accuses them of being lazy, orders them to go back to their brick making, and that of course completely demoralizes the foremen because they knew they couldn’t possibly make the same number of bricks as before. All they had to look forward to at this point was more beatings. And you would think that the foreman would put all the blame for their miserable circumstances where it belonged. That was on Pharaoh, on his wicked rule over them. He is the one to blame. He is the enemy of the people of Israel. But what did the foreman do? They run into Moses and Aaron, their leaders, and they blame them instead.

They say in Exodus verse 21 Chapter 5, “The Lord look on you and judge because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants and have put a sword in their hand to kill us”. Was this fair? Was this a just thing that they said to Pharaoh or to Moses and Aaron? Of course not. It was not fair at all. Moses and Aaron, they were faithfully carrying out the Lord’s commands. They were his faithful servants, and yet, even as they served the people whom God gave to them to help and to liberate from Egypt, they faced criticism, hostility from these very people that they were seeking to help. And there is a truth here. It is certainly true for those in positions of leadership in the church, but it can be true for all believers in Christ, and that is, so often, as you are genuinely seeking to honor Christ in serving others, in helping others, there will be times when your motives are questioned, when your actions are questioned, when you are criticized and accused of this or that. That will sometimes be the case among the people of God, as long as we are in this fallen world. 

But this is the saddest part of the chapter because the people of God here, they should have been united. They should have been one in heart and mind. They should have all agreed that Pharaoh was the problem, not Moses and Aaron. And they should have all shared the same hope and assurance that the Lord was truly working salvation through his appointed servants. But sadly, they were not united. And that can only be the work of the devil, the evil one.

And when there is division in the church, to be sure, when there is division in the church, humanly speaking, there will always be sin as the cause of it. One person may not be responsible at all for it, or he may be mostly responsible for it, but whatever the case may be, there will always be sin as the cause of division and conflict in the church.  But even beyond that, underlying that, ultimately, that conflict is the work of Satan. It is his will to sow seeds of division among the people of God.

And this is one of his most effective weapons in his war against Christ and his people. And the lesson that we ought to take from this passage is that we must never lose sight of who the true enemy of the Church really is. And so when we are in disagreement with our brothers and sisters in Christ, or worse, when we are in conflict with our brothers and sisters in Christ, and let me be clear, I’m not talking about those in the church who may be wolves in sheep’s clothing or heretics in the church, but I’m talking about those who we have every reason to believe are genuine Christian people, brothers and sisters in the Lord.

But when we are in disagreement or even conflict with them, what we are tempted to think is that they are the enemies. They are the bad guys, we are the good guys. And we lose sight of the fact that the real enemy, the true enemy of the church is the evil one. It is the devil, Satan.

When the foreman left Pharaoh, when they saw Moses and Aaron, they forgot that their enemy was Pharaoh, not these two servants of the Lord. And so when we have disagreements in the church, when we are in conflict with one another, we must seek to work that conflict out according to the Bible, to seek reconciliation, restoration. But we must never lose sight of who the true enemy is. We must never lose sight of the fact that it is the evil one who is seeking to grow this conflict.

And when we lose sight of that, then Satan has accomplished his purpose just as he did here in Egypt to bring division to the people of God. And so the third tribulation we often suffer as we enter the kingdom of God is the pain, the grief that comes with conflict in the church. And so in this passage the Israelites, having received this message from Moses that the Lord is about to bring them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, they learn the hard way the meaning of the words that Jesus spoke later when he said, “In the world you will have tribulation”.

And Jesus not only taught this lesson with the words that he spoke, but he demonstrated the truth of this in the life that he lived in his coming into the world for our salvation. Jesus showed us that the road to redemption, the path to salvation is one of affliction and suffering. In order for him to purchase our redemption our Lord first had to suffer. And in the Lord’s Supper this morning we have pictured before our very eyes the suffering that our Savior had to endure in order to bring salvation to us. His body was broken upon the cross for our sin. His very blood was poured out for our sin. He suffered nothing less than death and the curse of God in order to bring us forgiveness and eternal life. Now the suffering of Jesus was unique in the sense that only the suffering of Jesus could purchase our redemption. Only the suffering of Jesus could save us. 

However, he set an example that we who would follow in the steps of our Lord, we also will suffer. After Jesus warned his disciples that we will have tribulation in the world, he told them, but take heart, I have overcome the world. Jesus overcame Satan, sin, and death by his death and resurrection from the grave.

And if your faith is in Christ today, his victory is your victory. And so by faith in Christ, even as you go through affliction and tribulation in this world, you know that the outcome of all of it is not uncertain or unsure. Just as for the Israelites here, the outcome of what was going to happen was never in question. It was certain that the Lord would fulfill his promise to bring them out of Egypt and into the promised land.

And in the same way, the outcome of your faith and hope in Jesus Christ is certain. That is salvation, resurrection, entrance into glory. Just as God would certainly rescue His people from Egypt and bring them into the promised land through many tribulations, so your Savior, He will most certainly bring you into that true promised land, that eternal promised land that is yours. He will do so through many tribulations, but you have the promise and the assurance that He will bring you to that promised glory.

Let’s pray.

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