Message 13
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With this message we shall begin to consider the matter of God’s demand and Pharaoh’s resistance. God’s demand and Pharaoh’s resistance issued in a number of conflicts, which are recorded in chapters five through fourteen of Exodus. In this message we come to the first of these conflicts.
Exodus 5:1 says, “And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith Jehovah, God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness” (Heb.). In this verse we have an important title of God: Jehovah, God of Israel. In verse 3 God is entitled the God of the Hebrews. Hence, the demand on Pharaoh was made by Jehovah, the God of Israel, the God of the Hebrews.
We have pointed out that in Hebrew the title Jehovah is a form of the verb to be. This indicates that Jehovah is the unique self-existing One. He is the One who was, who is, and who will be. Only to Him can the verb “to be” be applied in an absolute sense. Only God is; we and all other things are not. In 6:3 God says, “I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God All-sufficient; but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them” (Heb.). God revealed Himself as Jehovah for the first time in Exodus 3. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not receive this revelation of Him.
In 5:1 God is also called the God of Israel. This title is different from the title the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, a title which signifies God as the God of resurrection. The title the God of Israel indicates that God is the God of a transformed people. Jacob was the name of a natural man, but Israel was the name of a transformed man. At birth, Jacob was not given the name Israel. Rather, he was called Jacob, which means a heel-holder, a supplanter. But throughout the course of his life, Jacob was transformed, and eventually God changed his name to Israel. This name implies victory and kingship. On the one hand, the transformed people are victors; on the other hand, they are kings. Even when the children of Israel were in a dreadful situation in Egypt, God still regarded them not as Jacob, but as Israel. In the eyes of God, His chosen people had already been transformed into victors and kings.
The same principle applies to the way God sees the church today. In the eyes of God, the church is already glorious. However, if our eyes are set on our spiritual condition, we may regard ourselves as being very pitiful. We may see ourselves as Jacob, not as Israel. Nevertheless, as God sees us, we are Israel. In His dealings with Satan, the persecutor and usurper, God told him that He is the God of a transformed, victorious, and kingly people.
We all need to see and believe that we are an Israel. You may not believe this today, but you will certainly believe it in the future, either in the next age or in eternity. In eternity all God’s chosen people will be an Israel. Do not be shortsighted, limited in your vision by your present situation. God does not regard you as one still in bondage under Pharaoh; rather, He sees you as one who has been delivered and brought into the all-inclusive Christ typified by the good land.
Do you dare believe that you are such an Israel, such a victor and king? We all must be bold enough to believe this and to declare it. Do not hold to your feeling regarding yourself, but believe in the word of God. If God says that you are an Israel, then you are an Israel, whether you feel this way about yourself or not.
Yes, in chapter five of Exodus the children of Israel were still under bondage in Egypt. However, God knew that they soon would be delivered from this bondage and brought into the wilderness, to the mountain, and eventually into the land of Canaan. In the good land they would be Israel, and God would be their God. Therefore, as God came to Pharaoh to negotiate with him, He was not disappointed by the condition of His people. He did not have Moses and Aaron tell Pharaoh that He was the God of Jacob. Instead, He let Pharaoh know that He was Jehovah, the God of Israel. It seemed as if God were saying, “Pharaoh, you must realize that I Am. I am He who was, who is, and who will be. You cannot change Me. Furthermore, in My sight, My people have been transformed into an Israel. They also are Hebrews, river-crossers. Because they are Hebrews, don’t try to keep them on this side of the Red Sea. I am Jehovah, and whatever I say must come to pass. I say that My people are Hebrews; therefore, they are Hebrews. You cannot keep them in Egypt. You must let them go.”
The titles of God mentioned in chapter five are extremely important. Even in diplomatic relations among the nations of the world, titles are of great significance. If a representative of a certain nation is to negotiate with the government of the United States, he must have a proper title. If he were simply a consul or minister, his position would not be high enough. He would need to bear the title of ambassador. Then he could engage in diplomatic negotiations. In the same principle, as God was negotiating with Pharaoh, He presented Himself according to the proper title: Jehovah, the God of Israel, the God of the Hebrews. He let Pharaoh know that He was the great I Am. As the I Am, He was everything, and Pharaoh was nothing. Moreover, He revealed Himself to Pharaoh as the God of Israel, the God of a people transformed to be victors and kings. As the One with such a marvelous title, God made His demand of Pharaoh.
God’s demand of Pharaoh is seen in 5:1. Speaking on behalf of the Lord, Moses and Aaron said to Pharaoh, “Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.” The feast is in contrast with slavery, with rigorous labor. Jehovah was telling Pharaoh to release His people from slavery so that they could hold a feast unto Him. The words “unto me” in this verse indicate that when God’s people are feasting, He is happy. Their feasting is unto Him. It seems that Jehovah was telling Pharaoh, “I am not happy to see My people under slavery in Egypt. Let them go so that they may feast to make Me happy. I like to see My people feasting and rejoicing. I am glad when they do nothing but eat and rejoice. That is a feast unto Me.”
This feasting unto the Lord is dispensational worship; that is, it is worshipping God according to what has been dispensed into us. As we eat, drink, praise, sing, and rejoice in the presence of God, we hold a feast unto Him. As we shall see, such a feast is also a sacrifice unto the Lord. To sacrifice is to worship. Dispensational worship is worship in which God is dispensed into us for our enjoyment so that we may feast in His presence with Him and unto Him. This is the worship God desires. This is not only revealed in the New Testament, but also implied in the Old Testament.
We may consider the feast here a festival, a holiday, or a holy day, a time for God’s people to rest with God and to enjoy God’s provision with God. Three times a year God ordained special periods of feasting for the Israelites. The three main festivals were the Passover, including the feast of unleavened bread; the feast of weeks (Pentecost); and the feast of tabernacles. At those times the people were not allowed to do any work; anyone who worked on those festival days would be cut off from God’s people (Lev. 23:30). This feasting pleased the Lord because it was worship to Him. According to the human concept, people should always be working; but according to the divine concept, God’s people should put aside their working for the times of festivals to rest from their busyness and to feast with God in worship to Him.
To hold a feast unto the Lord is to worship Him. According to the natural concept, to worship is to bow down, to kneel down, to prostrate ourselves before God. But according to God, real worship is our enjoyment of God as our provision and then our rest in what we enjoy of Him. As John 4 discloses, the worship the Father seeks is the drinking of the living water. The more we drink of His Son as the Spirit, the more worship God the Father receives. Real worship is to drink of God’s provision, which is God Himself prepared for our enjoyment.
The feast spoken of in 5:1 was to be held in the wilderness. The wilderness here has a positive meaning. It was the first destination God wanted His people to reach. On the day I was saved, I was immediately brought by God into the wilderness. The wilderness stands in contrast to Egypt. In Egypt, which was filled with the culture of the world, there were the treasure cities. God wanted to rescue His people from the treasure cities and from human culture and to bring them into a place of separation in the wilderness. Before we were saved, we were in one of the cities on the bank of the Nile. But, in God’s salvation, we have been brought out of such cities into the desert, where there is no human culture and no worldly building.
In verse 3 Moses and Aaron told Pharaoh, “Let us go, we pray thee, three days’ journey into the wilderness.” It is significant that this verse speaks of three days, not of two, four, or any other number. In the Bible the number three, especially three days, signifies resurrection. The Lord Jesus was resurrected on the third day. After the three days’ journey, the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea, in which the Egyptian forces were buried. After passing through the sea, God’s people were in resurrection. They had passed through death on the night of the Passover, and they were buried in the Red Sea. Therefore, after a journey of three days’ duration, God’s chosen and rescued people were in resurrection.
Some may wonder how the children of Israel could have been buried both in the Red Sea and in the Jordan River. This is not hard to understand if we view it in the light of our Christian experience. On the day we were saved, we were saved into the death of Christ. Since that time, we have been subject to the effectiveness of Christ’s death. This means that in our experience we are crucified and buried again and again. I cannot tell you how many times I have undergone this crucifixion and burial. This indicates that our initial, basic Christian experience is the same in nature as our more advanced experience. Whatever we experience in the maturity of our spiritual life will be the same in principle as our experience in the beginning, on the very day of our salvation. When we were saved, we were placed into the death of Christ, we were buried, and we were resurrected. We cannot exhaust the experience of this death, burial, and resurrection. I experienced all this on the day I was saved, although at the time I had no knowledge of it. After I came out of the gospel meeting in which I was saved, I had the sense as I walked on the street that I was in the wilderness. To be in the wilderness is to be on the other side of the Red Sea in resurrection. To be in such a position is to be a Hebrew, a resurrected and transformed river-crosser. This is the normal experience of salvation. Everyone who has been saved in a normal way has taken a three days’ journey into the wilderness and has experienced death, burial, and resurrection.
Jehovah also demanded that Pharaoh allow the children of Israel to sacrifice to Jehovah their God (v. 3). Sacrifice is a word parallel to feasting. To the children of Israel, the feast was a feast, but to God it was a sacrifice. Without the sacrifice, there was nothing to feast on. What the children of Israel were to feast on was the very sacrifice they were to offer to God. The Passover illustrates this. The lamb sacrificed to God was food for the children of Israel. This reveals that the feast and the sacrifice are two aspects of one thing. Whatever we sacrifice to God spontaneously becomes our feast. This also is dispensational worship. This kind of worship does not require that we prostrate ourselves before the Lord. God did not say, “Let My people go into the wilderness so that there they may prostrate themselves before Me.” God does not want His people to do this. He wants them to sacrifice to Him and to hold a feast unto Him.
In God’s demand placed on Pharaoh we see a perfect, complete salvation for His people. This salvation includes God’s rescuing His people from the usurping hand of Satan and bringing them into the wilderness in resurrection so that they can hold a feast unto Him and sacrifice to Him. What a wonderful salvation!
Now we come to Pharaoh’s resistance (5:2, 4-9). Pharaoh symbolizes the usurping Satan and our Satan-possessed and usurped self. Because the self is Pharaoh in a very practical way, we may be a Pharaoh both to ourselves and to others. A husband and wife may be a Pharaoh to each other, and parents may be a Pharaoh to their children.
A Pharaoh is one who keeps God’s people from feasting unto the Lord. For example, five brothers may live together in a brothers’ house. Three of them may desire to attend the church meeting as they usually do, but the others may restrain them and encourage them to stay home. In doing this, these two brothers become Pharaohs. Any time we keep others from feasting unto the Lord or from sacrificing to Him, we are a Pharaoh. Parents, for example, may be so concerned about their children’s education that they forbid them to attend the meetings of the church and require them to devote an unreasonable amount of time to study. When parents behave in such a way, they are Pharaohs to their children.
Sometimes we blame Satan too much. Yes, the usurping Satan is Pharaoh in an objective way. But we are Pharaohs in a practical, subjective way. We may be a Pharaoh to ourselves, not allowing ourselves to go into the wilderness to feast unto the Lord. If you check with your experience, you will see that many times you have frustrated yourself from feasting unto the Lord. You have kept yourself away from the meetings of the church, perhaps with tiredness as your excuse for not attending the church feast. Although you may have claimed to be too tired to attend the meetings, you were full of energy to talk on the telephone. Do not think that today only Satan himself is Pharaoh. Everyone can be a Pharaoh. Whenever the self is possessed by Satan and usurped by him, the self becomes a subjective Pharaoh.
Verse 2 records Pharaoh’s resistance in a detailed way: “And Pharaoh said, Who is Jehovah, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go” (Heb.). Here we see that Pharaoh denied Jehovah God, ignored His demand, and refused to let Israel go. Pharaoh refused even to acknowledge Jehovah, virtually denying Jehovah’s existence. Often when we frustrate others from feasting unto the Lord, we deny the Lord and ignore His demand. The same is true when we hinder ourselves from sacrificing to the Lord. In a very practical way, this means that if we keep ourselves from the church meetings, we are like Pharaoh who denied the Lord.
For us Christians to come together is a matter of great significance. Whenever we gather together according to the Lord’s ordination, we hold a feast unto the Lord and we sacrifice to our God. Suppose we Christians did not have a proper gathering. What would the Lord be able to do on earth? The Lord would not be able to do anything, and He would not receive any real worship. By this we see that the proper gathering together of Christians is of tremendous importance.
Some of the children of Israel may have thought that as long as they were delivered from the hand of Pharaoh and released from Egypt, everything would be all right. But that would not have been true. God’s chosen people were not only to make their exodus out of Egypt, but they were also to hold a feast unto the Lord in the wilderness and to sacrifice to Him. By its very nature a feast is a corporate matter. No one can hold a feast alone. To have a feast we must be together with many others. The more people there are, the better it is. Suppose a dinner of many courses is prepared and set on your dining table at home and you sit down to eat it by yourself. Is this a feast? Certainly not! In order for it to be a feast, you must invite a large number of people to eat with you. If you have just a few others to dine with you, this meal is still not a feast. You need a great company. In the same principle, no Christian can hold a feast unto the Lord alone or with just a few other believers. He must attend a proper gathering of Christians.
To miss a meeting of the church is to miss a feast and to lose out on the enjoyment. The loss we suffer in this way is not as serious as the loss God suffers. If we do not attend the feast, God has no feast and does not receive the sacrifice. May we all be deeply impressed with the importance of this.
In verse 7 Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and the officers, saying, “Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves.” Instead of letting Israel go, Pharaoh actually increased their labor with rigor. He even commanded that they be given no more straw. It is the same in our experience. When God is about to rescue a certain person from today’s world, Satan takes away that person’s “straw”; that is, he deprives him of the supply from the world. This forces that one to work with more rigor in order to make a living.
In verse 8 Pharaoh said, “And the number of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not reduce any of it” (Heb.). Here we see that although Pharaoh cut off the supply of straw, he still required the same number of bricks. This indicates that it was much harder for God’s people to do the daily work. Many Christians have experienced something like this. After they were called by God, it was harder for them to earn a living than it was before they were called. Simply because they had been touched by Christ, Satan took away their “straw” without lessening his demands. Hence, it became more difficult for them to make a living.
Furthermore, Pharaoh said of the children of Israel, “For they be idle; therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God” (v. 8). According to Pharaoh, it was because of idleness that the Israelites wanted to go into the wilderness to sacrifice to their God. In the eyes of today’s Pharaohs, especially in the eyes of the opposers and the unbelievers, we in the Lord’s recovery are idle. They accuse us of idleness in coming to the meeting hall so often to attend the meetings of the church or the meetings for the ministry of the Word. They condemn us, saying that we do not want to work, study, or care for our homes and families. According to their understanding, we use the meetings as an excuse for idleness.
In verse 9 Pharaoh said, “Let the labor be heavier on the men, that they may labor therein; and let them not regard vain words” (Heb.). Pharaoh did not want God’s people to regard what he thought were “vain words.” These “vain words,” however, were actually the word of God. The same is true today. Today’s Pharaohs regard the word of God as nothing more than vain words. As far as they are concerned, we who hearken to the word of God as it is sounded forth in the church meetings and in the meetings of the ministry are listening to vain words.
What we are doing in the church life may be idle in the eyes of the worldly people, but what they are doing is vanity in the eyes of God. Egypt is filled with busyness. Everyone still under bondage in Egypt is very busy. But as soon as someone is rescued from Egypt and is brought into the wilderness, he will become idle. Which do you prefer, busyness or idleness? I prefer this kind of idleness. Although I certainly am not a lazy person, I desire to be in what Pharaoh calls idleness. For example, I enjoy cleaning in my home and I am fond of working in the garden. But after spending a certain amount of time cleaning or working in this way, I may need to say, “Satan, this is enough. I will not do any more work now. Instead, I shall be idle before the Lord.” How good it is to be idle in this way!
There is a time when we all should say, “Satan, that is enough. It is now time for me to be idle.” To be idle in this sense means to feast unto the Lord and to sacrifice to Him. In the eyes of the worldly people, the church life is a life of idleness. Actually, we are neither idle nor busy — we are feasting and sacrificing. Before the Lord, this is the proper kind of human life.
God’s salvation is to rescue us out of busyness and to bring us into idleness. People today are too busy caring for the things of this life. Some are so industrious that they have no time to feast unto the Lord. We need to be delivered from this busyness in order to have more time for idleness. A lazy person should be trained to be busy. However, someone who is too busy must be trained to be idle, that is, to spend some time with the saints in the meetings of the church. The Christian life is not a life of worldly busyness; it is a life of proper idleness. We are not to be so busy with the things of this life that we disregard the word of God. How we enjoy being idle and regarding God’s “vain words” in the church meetings!
For us to live for Christ, we need to exist. Without our human existence we cannot live Christ. But today those in the fallen world care for nothing but their existence; they do not care for the purpose of their existence. To exist is one thing, but to exist for the divine purpose is another thing. The purpose ordained by God for our existence is to live Christ, to live God out, and to have God’s testimony. But the people of this world have only their existence; they have no purpose. Eventually they make their existence itself the purpose of their existence. They know nothing but existence. Satan picks up the existence of human beings or of human living and uses this existence to usurp people so that today the whole world cares only for existence, not for God’s purpose in existence.
All things necessary for our human existence need to be under a divine limitation. Anything that exceeds our need becomes worldly, “Egyptian,” something of Pharaoh, and it frustrates us from the economy of God’s purpose. In everything God’s economy must be the deciding factor. Our living should not be like that of the “Egyptians,” the worldly people. We need a place to live, and we need to keep our house clean. But if we continue with our cleaning when it is time to go to the meeting, our cleaning becomes “Egyptian,” something apart from the economy of God’s purpose. We are on earth not for cleaning but for a feast unto the Lord. Even how much time we spend with our children should be decided by God’s economy. Other Christians may act like the people of the world, but we have to be a holy people, a separated people.
Our living and our existence depend on the provision from the heavenly source, not on the supply from the world. For this we need the vision, and we need the exercise of our faith. Moses was a man of great faith to lead two million people out of Egypt into the wilderness, where there was no earthly supply for their human existence.
Now we come to the issue of the conflict caused by God’s demand and Pharaoh’s resistance. The first aspect of the issue was that Israel suffered more cruelty (5:10-21). The greater the conflict, the more God’s chosen people suffered. This is the enemy’s strategy. Do not think, however, that increased suffering is a negative sign. Actually, it is a positive sign, for it indicates that God’s negotiation with the enemy is taking place and that we are affected by it. Our suffering is a sign that God is in the process of delivering us.
Verses 22 and 23 indicate that Moses was bothered and discouraged. Moses even asked the Lord why He had sent him. Furthermore, Moses said to Him, “Neither hast thou delivered thy people at all.” Many of us have had similar experiences. The more we ministered Christ to others, the more they suffered. This caused us to become troubled and discouraged. Our concept is that if we minister in a proper way, others will be blessed. We expect the dead to be resurrected, the sick to be healed, the weak to be strengthened, and the poor to be enriched. However, the situation is often the opposite of what we anticipate.
I can testify of this strongly from my experience. Many times I have been disappointed, just as Moses was. Sometimes I went to the Lord and said, “Lord, what happened? You told me to minister this matter to Your people. It seems to me that You should bless them and put Your seal upon my ministry. But the more I minister to the people, the more difficulty they have. Lord, am I wrong in some way? I don’t understand what is happening.”
After Moses expressed his discouragement and bewilderment to the Lord, Jehovah God came in to reconfirm His name and His covenant (6:1-8). God said to Moses, “I am Jehovah: And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God All-sufficient; but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them. And I have also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers” (6:2-4, Heb.). What is more precious than the reconfirmation of God’s name and His covenant? By God’s reconfirmation, Moses was strengthened and encouraged both to go back to Pharaoh and to speak again to the children of Israel.
In brief, the Lord’s name is what He Himself is, and His covenant is His word spoken with a promise and confirmed with an oath. A word spoken in an ordinary way is not a covenant, but a word spoken with a promise and confirmed with an oath becomes a covenant. (See Life-study of Hebrews, Message Thirty-six.) God spoke to Abraham; then He spoke with a promise concerning the good land, a promise that was confirmed again and again. Finally, there was an oath, so that there was an agreement, a contract, made by God between God Himself and Abraham; the promising word of God became a covenant (Gen. 15). Circumcision was a token of this covenant (Gen. 17).
Today we may experience God’s reconfirming His name and His covenant. Sometimes after I have complained to the Lord, He has confirmed His name to me with the reminder that He is the I Am, the unique self-existing One. At such times of reconfirmation, the Lord seems to say, “I can never fail. I mean whatever I say. I am, but the sufferings are not. Do not believe in your situation — believe in what I am.” In such times God also reconfirms His covenant to us.
In 6:6-8 the Lord gave Moses some very encouraging words to speak to the children of Israel. He wanted Moses to tell them that He would bring them out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, redeem them with an outstretched arm, take them to Him for a people, and bring them into the land which He promised to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Nevertheless, verse 9 says, “And Moses spoke so unto the children of Israel; but they hearkened not unto Moses from shortness of spirit, and from cruel bondage” (Heb.). Their spirit had been exhausted by their sufferings. Hence, they would not regard God’s word to Moses. In their shortness of spirit, God’s people were like a car without gasoline. When we are short of spirit, we cannot bear any kind of bondage or suffering. Therefore, we need to pray that our spirit will be preserved and supplied. We need to ask the Lord to keep us from ever being short of spirit.
In this message we have seen the conflict between God and God’s enemy, Pharaoh, who symbolizes Satan objectively and the Satan-possessed and usurped self subjectively. God wants us to take a three days’ journey into the wilderness so that we may hold a feast unto Him and sacrifice to Him. But Satan and the self rise up to deny God and to refuse to let us go. Nevertheless, because of the Lord’s full salvation, many of us have been delivered from bondage in Egypt and are now in the wilderness enjoying the feast and offering sacrifice to our God.
