The Mustard Seed Mill

The children of Israel had become accustomed to bondage. Moses, a Hebrew himself, lived outside of this bondage because of his upbringing with Pharoah’s daughter. Moses one day sees the burdens of the Israelites and takes matters into his own hands, killing an Egyptian. Moses fled to the land of Midian.

When Moses had been in the land of Midian for 40 years, the Lord appeared to him in a burning bush. Throughout this time, the bondage of the children of Israel had become worse under the new Pharaoh. They began to cry out to the Lord. From the burning bush the Lord tells Moses that He has heard the groaning of His people and He has come down to deliver them. He sends Moses to Egypt.

Deliverance from bondage?! This sounds like amazing news! Deliverance from toil. Freedom from oppression. Freedom to worship God. Freedom to build something for your own people and not for your oppressors…

After Moses encountered the Lord, he met with Pharaoh to ask him to let the Israelites go. Pharaoh decided that if the Israelites had time to petition him that they have too much time on their hands and so he increased their labor. This infuriated the Israelite officers who took their complaints to Moses and Aaron. They sought to call down judgement from the Lord on Moses and Aaron for the trouble the Israelites are encountering because Moses sought to intervene and set them free.

In Acts, Stephen recounts this story when he is being publicly accused of blasphemy. Stephen, full of the Lord, retells this story as he is seeking to turn his accusers relationship with the Lord. Stephen says this in his address in Acts 7:35 “This Moses whom they rejected, saying ‘who made you a ruler and a judge?’ is the one God sent to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the Angel who appeared to him in the bush.”

The Israelites cried out against Moses because they received Moses as a ruler and a judge. They saw the immediate disruption in what they had come to know. Though they were already groaning and calling out to the Lord, the fact that things got worse when Moses came on the scene made them turn against Moses. They saw Moses as the reason for their intensified circumstances, not Pharaoh. They saw Moses as a ruler and a judge, not as their deliverer.

We do this, don’t we?

Sometimes we do this with others. Sometimes, when others come to help bring us out of our bondage, we choose to look at them as those who are disrupting our current state. Sometimes we are comfortable in our bondage. Sometimes, even though we groan at the state we are in within our own “Egypt,” we prefer “Egypt” to the disruption that occurs when we are being delivered. We reject those that are “Moses” to us and view them as a judge rather than a deliverer.

Lots of times we do this with God. Oh man, does He have a great plan for our deliverance. He’s got a great plan to bring us out of the muck and the mire that we have been treading. He’s got a way that is better than our way. He’s got plans that are far more than we could think or imagine. But, when the first steps of that plan are presented, we often become indignant and stand in refusal because of the disruption that occurs when we view God as only judge and not deliverer.

Often, I want to think it’s just the day and age we live in. Don’t judge me. That’s the thing, right? We aren’t supposed to judge one another in this culture? Then I realize, it seems this has been an issue even since Cain and Abel. Cain felt some sort of judgement and took his anger out on Abel. Even in that moment, God was trying to show Cain how to be found pleasing to the Lord. Instead, he chose to receive it as judgement rather than instruction for life and for his good.

Thinking about these moments in my own life, I can see where at times I have been more frustrated with the circumstances, person, or even the Lord trying to bring me out of my “Egypt” than I have been frustrated with my “Egypt” itself! Sometimes I see my deliverance as more of a judgement and I want to reject it or push back against it rather than submit to the goodness that God has in store.

What is your “Egypt?” What is God doing in your life that is maybe causing some disruption, but could be a path of deliverance? Will we portray what Stephen said and miss the fact that God is bringing deliverance because we are more worried about feeling a moment of judgement and disruption? Or, will we receive the Lord as our deliverer, submit to what He has for us and look beyond Egypt to the promised land?