“Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the LORD, and
I will bring you out from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched
arm and with great acts of judgment. I
will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that
I am the LORD your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the
Egyptians. I will bring you into the
land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the LORD.’” Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but
they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh
slavery. Exodus 6:6-9
God makes some amazing promises. He made amazing promises to the people of
Israel, and he makes amazing promises to us.
But what do we do with those promises?
When Moses brought the promises of God to the people of
Israel who were enslaved in Egypt, the people didn’t believe them. They didn’t listen. They were so overcome by the harsh slavery
they were in that their spirits were broken. They were so broken in spirit, that even after
calling out to God in their distress and getting
an answer from him, that they did not believe it. This shows us a truth about ourselves: The harshness of what we are enslaved to can
make it hard to hear or believe the words of the LORD.
You may be thinking, “Yeah, but they were actual
slaves. Of course that was true for
them. I’m not a slave, so that doesn’t
apply to me.” Doesn’t it though? True, you aren’t a slave like the people of
Israel were to the Egyptians. But what
are you a slave to? What is it in your
life that has you enslaved…that has you trapped in such a way that you can’t
get out or away from it? Maybe it’s a
sin of some kind, one that no one else knows about. Maybe it’s a situation that seems to have no
remedy or resolution. Maybe it’s a relationship
or a decision. There are numerous things
that can make us feel trapped or stuck and make us lose hope.
The things that we are stuck in or feel enslaved by can
easily break our spirit, which makes it hard to hear or believe what the LORD
has said or promised. Feeling stuck,
trapped, enslaved wears us down. When
day after day we think, ‘this is the day I will get out of this,’ and then it
doesn’t happen, we start to lose hope. The
circumstances around us can often feel more real than the promises of God, and
they can be overwhelming. We see the
reality of what is around us, and it overwhelms. Even though we know of God’s promises, when
we have not seen the reality of their fulfillment, they feel less real. And the reality of our circumstances looms
larger in our minds. Our focus shifts to
what we see, which seems hopeless, rather than remaining on God, our source of
hope. When this happens, our spirits are
broken.
This is what happened to the people of Israel when Moses
shared the promises God had made to them.
They heard the promises of God, but they were so focused on their
hopeless situation that they couldn’t believe the promise of hope that God had
given them. It happened to them, and it
happens to us. So what do we do about
it?
The good news is that God never breaks his promises. He didn’t break his promises to the people of
Israel, and he doesn’t break his promises to us. And that’s what we need to
remember. When that situation comes
along that has us trapped and enslaved, we can’t focus on the situation. We need to focus on God. God is the one who sets the captive
free. God is the one redeems us. God is the one who takes us to be his
own. When we focus on God, on his
promises, on his power, on what he has done, our situation doesn’t seem so
big. And it is no problem for the God of
the universe to break the chains of whatever has us trapped or enslaved.
That is something that brings hope even to the most hopeless
of situations.
