God’s Timetable
After Moses received God’s command to confront Pharaoh and demand that he let the Israelites go, Moses obeyed God. Pharaoh spurned Moses, however, and spurned God as well: “Who is Yahweh that I should obey Him by letting Israel go? I do not know anything about Yahweh, and besides, I will not let Israel go” (Ex. 5:2). Pharaoh also demanded that the slaves gather their own straw for making bricks, even though their quota for bricks did not decrease (see vv. 6-18).
The Israelite slaves who were foremen were understandably upset, and they vented their frustration to Moses and Aaron. “May the LORD take note of you and judge…because you have made us reek in front of Pharaoh and his officials—putting a sword in their hand to kill us!” (v. 21). Moses prayed and asked God why this had happened. He had obeyed God, but his actions apparently had backfired, making things even more difficult for the Hebrew slaves. “You haven’t delivered your people at all,” Moses told God (v. 23).
You might have been asking a similar question of God had you been Moses. When God commissioned Moses to go to Pharaoh, He said, “I have observed the misery of My people in Egypt, and have heard them crying out because of their oppressors, and I know about their sufferings. I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them from that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the territory of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites (3:7-8). Did God really know what He was doing? Would He really be able to deliver His people from bondage?
The answer, of course, is that God did know what He was doing. God doesn’t just determine what He will do, but also how He will do it. Moses may have forgotten that previously God also had told him, “When you go back to Egypt, make sure you do all the wonders before Pharaoh that I have put within your power. But I will harden his heart so that he won’t let the people go” (4:21).
In direct response to Moses’ complaint that God had not delivered His people at all (see 5:22-23), God said, “Now you are going to see what I will do to Pharaoh: he will let them go because of My strong hand: he will drive them out of his land because of My strong hand” (6:1). This is exactly what happened, but it took some time to bring Pharaoh to this point. Yet in the meantime, God’s mighty power was on display. Also, with the tenth and final plague, God provided a vivid picture to the Israelites of the salvation that He eventually would make available in Christ.
We don’t always understand God’s timetable. Just ask Mary and Martha (see John 11:1-44). Nor do we understand why God sometimes chooses not to heal or to grant other requests that we believe to be in line with His will or honoring to Him. Thankfully, however, we can trust God to do what’s right and what will glorify Him the most. He’s God, and we aren’t!
