Hardships

WELCOME

Pastor Chris Paavola:

Well, hey everybody. Good morning. Everybody here on July 5th morning. This is like for a preacher. I saw this talent on my calendar for months now that July 5th was a Sunday morning. I’m like, why? But you guys are here today. Thank you so much. Hopefully your neighbors stopped fireworks immediately at 11 o’clock and didn’t shoot it off any later than that. My neighbors, it was like they were in my bedroom at midnight just still. Anyway, but yeah, we are excited and grateful for 250 years. Isn’t that crazy? 250 years. As a country, man, we are blessed and just freedom is never free. We know that. And just the sacrifice of so many people to bring us to 250 years as a country where we can worship in freedom like this, I think we should probably pause and just thank God for that. So would you pray with me, please.

PRAYER

Heavenly Father, we don’t take it lightly that our nation for a quarter of a millennia has been organized and existed. And we thank you, God, for the people, the sacrifices, the countless people who have made it possible for us to not only live in this great lands, pursuing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but to worship freely as we do. God continue to just bless us as a nation that we may worship you freely as we do and confess your name. And we thank you, God, for just this day and this weekend to celebrate this moment in our history. It’s your name we pray. Amen.

WHEN LIFE GETS HARDER

Yeah, just actually the 4th of July and 250 years of freedom serves as a kind of a fitting backdrop of what we’re going to talk about today as we can continue our greater than series where we’re journeying along with the life of this man named Moses and discovering as he does a life greater than we know with a God who’s greater than we know.

And the reason it’s fitting is because the people of Israel are wrestling with this idea that freedom isn’t free. And as a country, we know that there’s a great cost to this. And they’re like, is this really worth the cost of what it’s going to take to leave Egypt like this? Is it worth it? And for them, it’s a story that stands on its own, but for us it starts to raise its own question for us of like, what do we do when it’s hard to follow God?

When God wants something for us, but it’s hard. And this is a message I think that applies to all of us, honestly, but especially to new believers. I want to make sure if you’re new to the faith or your faith just came alive, this is an important message for you today because you’re in a honeymoon phase where everything’s great and you’re just walking with Jesus and it’s no problem. But then life starts happening and you have these thousands of micro decisions that you need to make where you have to choose your way or God’s way and really the easier way or the harder way. And there’s a question you feel in you all the time of, is it worth it? What do you do when it’s hard to live a life that God wants for you? What do you do, like for instance, when everybody at the construction site or everybody at the golf course is using colorful language and you’re trying to watch your language, what do you do?

It’s easier to fit in and it’s hard. You don’t want to be ostracized or what do you do when you decide not to go to that website that you want to go to? Or what do you do when you want to handle your finances your way and then you hear about God’s way and you’re trying to work your offering and grow it until you’re giving a tithe and you also want to go on vacation, right? What do you do? It’s hard. It’s hard to forgive your neighbor when they’re shooting off fireworks at midnight or it’s hard to get up on July 5th and go to church. What do you do when it’s hard to follow God? And it seems like there’s an easier way out and you have these moments where you have to weigh a bunch of things and decide what you’re going to do.

What do you do at work when you could totally cut a couple corners and get ahead or you could cook the numbers a little bit and make yourself look better, but you know it’s not the right thing to do and it’s hard. So what do you do when it’s hard to follow God, when you know the right thing to do or what God has called you to do and it’s not easy. Before you make that decision of what you’re going to do, fortunately for us today, we’re going to see how God would have us to think about it. And God actually introduces something for us to think about before we make a decision of what we will or won’t do. God’s like, “I want you to also consider this. ” And it comes to us in this account in the book of Exodus. Now I don’t have my clicker down here.

I left it. I think I left it at my office. So I’m going to need you to click through this if you don’t mind. But right away, as you heard in the message or in the reading from Ms. Ashley, there’s a man named to Moses. Oh, look at this guy bringing. Grant Bowdish everybody, Grant Bowdish. Thank you, thank you, thank you. All right, thank you so much, man.

MOSES’ BACKSTORY

Oh yeah. Anyway, so God chooses the people of Israel are in Egypt for about 400 years in slavery and God hears their complaint and their cry and he wants to free them. And so he selects this man named Moses to be an emissary, to go to Pharaoh and say, “Let my people go. ” And as you would expect, Pharaoh’s like, “Who are you? What do you mean let my people go? Who is this Lord? I don’t know this God that you’re talking about.

What are you talking about? ” And Moses doesn’t come with a bribe of money. He doesn’t come with the big army like forcing Pharaoh’s hand. He’s just a guy, a shepherd standing in front of him. He says, “Let my people go. ” And he’s like, “Let your people go? No.”

And Moses comes back to Pharaoh a couple more times and Pharaoh eventually decides to punish his insubordination to make an example out of him and really to make an example to all of Israel. This is what happens when you dare to defy Pharaoh’s command.

BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW

And so he says, “That same day, you are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks. Let them go and let my people go and gather their own straw, but require them to make the same number of bricks as before. Don’t reduce the quota.” And I think we have an idea, even like we all made mud pies growing up. We all played with Plato or made ashtrays for mom and dad. I guess they don’t make ashtrays anymore, but whatever they make in pottery class with whatever. We’ve all made pottery in some way. Anyway, so we kind of have an idea of what this looked like, but fortunately we actually know what the step-by-step process looks like.

There’s a temple in Egypt. It’s the tomb of Rekhmire from the 15th century BC and in this tomb that’s like next to pyramids and sphinxes and all that kind of stuff on the wall there’s hieroglyphics as you would expect, but there’s a section of the hieroglyphics that depicts all of the servants of Rekhmire making his tomb and it shows them making bricks. And so this is a pretty significant finding where we now know the step-by-step process and it kind of goes as you would expect, but it’s on the bank of the Nile River. So they would go down to the bank of the river there and they’ve got some kind of a tool like a digging tool or if you’re a military, an entrenching tool and they’re digging into the mud and they have like some kind of basket and by hand they’re taking this dirt and mud and water and putting it.

So, like it’s just filthy, filthy work, right? They’re working in mud all day. They’re filthy and they’re taking that and putting it on the buckets. And so I don’t have a wicker basket here, but I got a Menards bucket. I chose the small one because a full bucket of dirt is really heavy, man. And so they would take this bucket of dirt and they’d put it on their shoulders and they’d have to carry and walk it to wherever like they were deciding they were going to make bricks. They wouldn’t do it right where they’re digging. And so this doesn’t even have water in it and it’s already really heavy. And so can you imagine just like how not just dirty this work is, but how heavy it is and laborious it is. And then they would take and add like straw to it and Egypt out of the goodness of their heart would provide straw for them that they could use and you would make a mixture of water and dirt and straw to act like a bonding agent a little bit and to prevent cracking and all that kind of stuff.

And you would mix it together into a solution and then you would walk it over to a forming area and you could see it’s a little bit on the, I guess the fresco or whatever, chipped away. But there’s like a wooden frame and they would stack different sizes of wood, frames on top of each other and pour they would take the mud, water, straw mixture and they would, “I’m not going to do that because Carol would be very upset with me if I poured dirt on the altar. The altar team would have my hide.” Anyway, so they would pour it into this mixture or into the frame and make these squares and then pile them up. And then when they had the right size, they would carry it off and they would have like a yolk kind of a thing where they would carry off the bricks that they had formed.

You see that guy sitting up there in the top right, that guy is the overseer. He’s the slave driver and there’s an inscription above him that says he holds the rod for the lazy worker. So if you weren’t working hard enough, they would motivate you with a rod or a lash or a whip or whatever to keep working. And so you’d carry off the brick to the side and you’d carry it to a location and then where they would fire, I guess it’s not hot enough in Egypt and the desert or whatever, but they would have a kiln of some kind and they would fire the bricks and then they would take it out of the fire and take those bricks and like up there in the top left, you would see they would stack these bricks in a certain pattern and make a pyramid or they’d stack these bricks and make a sphinx or in this case they’d stack these bricks and make a tomb for a guy. This is back breaking work.

Pharaoh talked about a quota. There’s another piece of papyrus we found and it describes, I mean, this is just heavy, right? It was backbreaking work that a quota of four to five workers was anywhere from one to 2,000 bricks per day per day. And in this papyrus, this five workers had a quote of about a thousand bricks and they received one beating, on lashing for every brick short of their quota. So there’s four or five guys, I’ll say four guys and they’re a hundred bricks short and they show up to the slave driver and he counts their bricks and they’re a hundred short and the four guys would line up and each would receive 25 beatings for their failure to make the quota. It’s brutal. No wonder the people of Israel cried out to God for their slavery and Pharaoh is like, “Wait a minute, you guys want to come to me and tell me that I should let you go. You’re my labor force. No.

10 Then the slave drivers and overseers went out and said to the people, “This is what Pharaoh says: “I will not give you any more straw. 11 Go and get your own straw wherever you can find it, but your work will not be reduced at all.” 12 So the people scattered all over Egypt to gather stubble to use for straw.

           Exodus 5

And so he tells them, “Now you’ve got to make brick. Don’t reduce the quota. Still a thousand bricks for every four guys, but now you got to go get your own straw.” And so the people of Israel on this entire production line now have to walk around Egypt looking for and the ditches of the desert looking for straw anywhere they can find and then they got to carry the straw back to the mud piles and then they got to add the straw that they find with their own hands. It’s kind of wet out there. They got to add it to and add this step into the process. But you can imagine this step was extremely time consuming in a desert. And so at the end of the day where you’re looking for straw, you’re 500 brick short and five guys line up and you don’t get 25 lashes today because of Moses you get a hundred.

That’s what we’re talking about here. And of course Israel, this moment is going, is this worth it?

Is following this God worth it? And it brings this question to the surface that we can identify with. What do you do? And it’s hard to live the life God wants for you. And so naturally they complain. This week, my laptop decided to die. It’s funny to like hear myself complaining about my work in light of this, but my laptop started dying and the screen would stop working, but I figured out that if I close it slowly, the screen turns on and then I could open it back up and it would screen would work. And I’d be like, okay, little bit of a nuisance, but my laptop’s fine. Then like on Wednesday or so, the screen started flickering every once in a while and I’d have to like move the screen, pet it and tell it I love it to get it to stop flickering.

And then the screen about like Thursday, Friday, I started getting these black splotches and all this kind of stuff and it was no longer functional. I had to get a new laptop. But when my screen wasn’t working, what did I… Man, all I wanted to do was complain and tell everybody in the office how hard my life was, right? It’s all because misery loves company. You just want to complain.

21 and they said to Moses and Aaron, “May the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.

                                                                                                                     Exodus 5

And so of course this is going on for the people of Israel and they don’t have straw. They complain to Moses. And in Exodus five, it says, the Israelites said to Moses, “May the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.” You’re killing us, Moses. Blood is on your hands for what you dared to do. Let my people go. ” Thanks Moses. Thanks God of Moses. This is ridiculous. And so Moses hears this and he complains to God.

22 Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Why Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Is this why you sent me? 23 Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all.

                                                                                                                                           Exodus 5

Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Why Lord? Why have you brought trouble on this people?”

Are you kicking them while they’re down? What have you got against them? You brought this trouble on them. “Is this why you sent me?” to just make their life harder? “Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people and you have not rescued your people at all. “ Quick side note, this is not what we’re talking about today, but I think this is a really interesting point that is worth hanging onto here. Moses gives us permission to complain to God. This isn’t the only time we see people complaining to God and I think a lot of us will spend our time complaining to other people about our life and you’ll ask God to fix things, but you can complain to God. He’s big enough. He can handle it and he’s not offended by it or put off by it because we’re about to see what God says in response.

And some of you I think are just so polite with God. You would never dare tell him how you really feel. It’s an unhealthy relationship. We would say this like a healthy relationship is one where two people can talk and in a healthy relationship you could tell the other person what they’re doing that’s bothering you and if you can’t, we would say that’s room for growth in the relationship. If you’re afraid to tell someone how you’re feeling and what they’re doing and how they’re failing to meet your expectations and you’re afraid to tell it to them, that would be an area for growth because a healthy relationship has good communication even about how they’re feeling, right? And so maybe in your relationship with God, one simple step forward you can take is to just get honest like this and tell them how you feel.

You talk to your girlfriends and your buddies about how you feel. You talk to your spouse about how you feel. Tell God how you feel. See what happens because in this circumstance, God responds and here now is how God responds to the complaints of Israel, to the complaints of Moses and he introduces and reminds them of something that they’re not thinking about. Take a look. Exodus chapter six, verse six,

GOD RESPONDS

6 “Therefore, say to the Israelites: “I am the Lord and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgement. 7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.”

            Exodus 6

God says, “I am the Lord.” That’s my name. He reminds Moses of the name that he gave that he revealed to him at the burning bush. We talked about this. I am. And then we say Yahweh, he is. Yahweh. And he says, “I’m the Lord.” Remember I am and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. “I will free you from being slaves to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people. I will be your God and then you will know that I am the Lord your God.” And a few verses later he talks about, “I will give you a lands that I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, a land flowing with milk and honey.” But hiding in plain sight right there, the people of Israel bring their complaints. Moses brings his complaint, hiding in plain sight right in front of us. Notice his name is I am. Y’all say I am. But all of his answers talk about what I will do. Y’all say I will. Look at it. I will bring you out. I will free you. I will redeem you. I will take you as my own. I will be your God. And then you will. Then you will know. Not now, but then you will know. I know you’re looking for straw in the ditches of the desert. I know your hands are in the mud. I know you’re being beaten and lashed, but you will know then.

NEW MATH

And all of his answer points our attention to what he will do that we tend to forget with what is happening. He points our attention to what will happen. We’re so caught up in what we’re doing. We’re forgetting what he will do. He takes us out of the presence and brings us into the future by reminding us of what he will do. He has a way of bringing us out of the moment and he introduces something into this equation where we’re factoring in. Okay, this formula we have, is this worth it? What’s the costs and what’s the benefit? And God introduces one factor into our formula that we tend to forget when we’re mathing the math and he’s like, “Don’t forget what I will do. Don’t forget. Don’t forget this.

Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

      1 Thessalonians 4:17

 It’s like the apostle Paul later on will talk about this formula in a book called First Thessalonians where he says, “Our light and momentary troubles.” How could you possibly say what I’m going through is light and momentary.” Well, it’s light and momentary when you consider the eternal glory that far outweighs them all. Our light and momentary troubles “are achieving for us in eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” And guys, I know you don’t like picking straw, but don’t forget the land of milk and honey. It’ll be worth it. It’ll be worth it in that day. I know it’s hard making bricks, but don’t forget the promised land. I know it’s hard not going to that website you want to go to. I know it’s hard handling your finances the way God would encourage us to handle them. I know it’s hard to forgive your neighbor when they’re shooting off fireworks. I know it’s hard not living with that person before marriage. I know it’s hard to watch your language when you’re at the construction site, but it’s worth it. It’s really, it’s simple.

A LIFE WITH GOD MAY NOT BE EASIER, BUT IT IS BETTER.

A life with God may not be easier, but it is better. A life with God may not be easier in the moments, but it is better. This is actually a claim all throughout scripture, that Daniel’s life in the lion’s den is better than the alternative, that Egypt’s life looking for straw and making bricks is better than the alternative, that David’s life hiding in caves as a refugee is better than the alternative and that Jesus’ life on a cross for you is better than the alternative.

Because the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding it’s shame.

                                                                                                                                           Hebrews 12:2

I love how the writer of Hebrews describes this about Jesus. Take a look. “Because of the joy waiting for him, he endured the cross and disregarded its shame.” This idea that life with God may not be easier but it is better motivated Jesus to even go to a cross because what was being achieved, the eternal glory far outweighed the light and momentary trouble of a cross. Come on. And Jesus in another place, Jesus will describe this as the narrow way that few choose and here’s why. Because we are instant gratification people. We want the gratification now and this is delayed gratification. The life that God wants for us is harder, but it’s better. And the gratification on so many of the things God calls us to, the gratification might be in the moment or it might be that your heart slowly becomes more generous, more kind and compassionate, that you become more loving, more charitable, more forgiving, or maybe it’s delayed gratification all the way to heaven, but it’s delayed gratification.

And in those moments where it’s hard to live the life God wants for us, we have to remember that a life with God may not be easier, but it is better.

Now, I know this message is very convicting and in some ways can be discouraging, especially if you keep bumping into the same old sin, or especially if this morning I just called out something in your life and you’re like, “That’s kind of off limits. No, we don’t go there.” I know that can be discouraging because that’s what happens to the peace of the people of Israel. They hear Moses and Moses tells them what God’s answer is of what he will do and they’re wrestling with, “Is it better? Life with God is not easier, but it’s better.”.

9 Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor.

                                                                                                                                                Exodus 6

SOFTEN YOUR HEARTS

And in chapter six, verse nine, it says,

9 Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor.

“Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and their harsh labor.” So, if you’re feeling discouraged or if you’re feeling convicted this morning, I want to point out something that you have that the people of Israel don’t.

A LIFE WITH GOD MAY NOT BE EASIER, BUT IT’S BETTER

You have proof. Think about that. The people of Israel are sitting there and they’ve never met this God before. He just told them his name. That’s all he’s got. That’s all they’ve got is this name. He has no track record with them yet. He hasn’t part of the Red Seas. He hasn’t rescued them. He hasn’t brought them into the promised land. He hasn’t given them his commands. They have no idea what his qualities or attributes are like. They haven’t met Jesus yet and seen what grace and truth and action looks like and haven’t seen how far God is willing to go for them, but you do.

You have an entire book full of what God has done and how not one of his promises has failed. You have an entire book full of all the things God has done for you in Christ. And so you have something that the people of Israel don’t. Gratitude. You can look back on everything that God has done and see what he will do for you. And now what it does is it changes the motivation because for the people of Israel, the motivation is, well, suffer through this and work hard and eventually will achieve the promised land. But for you, God has achieved the promised land for you. He’s forgiven you in Christ and grace changes the way you go about thinking through this life that God wants for you. Because now if you fail, it’s not a matter of just feeling bad about it, but now you have gratitude and you respond to his grace to try again believing that life with God may not be easier, but it is better. Let’s pray.

PRAYER

Heavenly Father, First of all, want to acknowledge that we have fallen short. You’ve called us to a life that’s greater than the life we know and a life that’s greater than our hardship and a life that’s better. But we acknowledge sometimes it’s hard. It’s hard to live that out in the moment. It’s hard to live that out in the day to day. I pray first of all for your forgiveness to wash over us and your grace to wash over us and in response, help us to live the life worthy of this calling we’ve received. Help us to live a life with you. It may not be easier, but it is better.

And God, when we struggle, motivate us by your grace of what you have done for us. When we don’t know what to pray, God, we can always pray the words your son taught us to pray. So we say together: Our Father,

Who art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done,

On earth as it is in heaven,

Give us this day our daily bread,

And forgive us our trespasses,

As we forgive those who trespass against us,

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil,

For thine is the kingdom,

And the power,

And the glory,

Forever and ever,

Amen.