Imagine if you will, you are a slave in a hot, dry and dusty country.  It’s dirty all the time. You’re dirty all the time. You arise at 5 a.m. to begin a long hot day, making and stacking bricks all day long. You don’t have a choice.  Decisions are made for you. You work long hours making and stacking bricks with few or no breaks until dark. And there is the whip, always present if you do not meet someone else’s expectations. It is painful if you are the object of its wrath. There is bleeding, pain, and possible infection to abide with. This is your life day after day after day with no end in sight. You are captured; you are a slave. There is no possibility of another life, even though you dream of it to get through the heat, the pain, and the misery. Your fellow slaves grumble and complain and are equally as miserable, but their attitudes contribute to the misery and pain of everyone else. This is the life of a slave. HIs life is not his own. Nothing is his own, not even his children or his wife. They are slaves too and can be treated any way the owner wishes. It is a dreary life, one with out hope of any future.

This is a picture, albeit not comprehensive, of the life of the Israelites in Egypt. After the Hebrew leader and benefactor Joseph died, another Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph. Joseph’s people were plentiful and he made them into slaves. At one time in the past, the Hebrews were treated differently. Pharaoh’s most trusted servant Joseph was one of their own, and the nation had respect because of him. But after Joseph’s death, things began to change. The Hebrews were no longer protected in the land where they had taken refuge. (Read the story of Joseph in Genesis where he dies at the end of that book. In Exodus is where the fortunes of the Hebrews begins to change after his death.)

But God…

God sends a deliverer

God brought Moses back from the wilderness to challenge Pharaoh’s authority over the people of God whom Pharaoh had now made his slaves. These were Moses’s people and he eventually got them released by the power of God. They were free! The Hebrews watched as God took care of them as they left Egypt. First, they were loaded down with riches from the Egyptians, paid in gold and silver. Then they were hemmed in at the Red Sea with the Egyptians coming after them. God guarded them with a pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud to keep the solders away while He prepared a way through the Red Sea for them to escape. After the Hebrews got across the Red Sea, the soldiers thought they would try it and were drowned as the waters came rushing back into the sea. The Hebrews then saw water flow from a rock when they were thirsty and food fall from the sky when they were hungry. Healing was provided when they needed it, and deliverance from fiery snakes. The scriptures say they saw His works, but did not know His ways. Read Psalms 78 and 103.

Our own life of faith is a journey like theirs, of growing in relationship with this unseen God. Seeing Him  answer  your prayers, observing Him work on your behalf, just as the Hebrews saw, encourages our faith. Every time the believer sees God rescue him, meet a need, heal his sickness, or otherwise rescue him in some way, this should work in the heart of that believer to trust God more as he sees His nature and character more clearly. This prepares the believer for when adverse circumstances come. He won’t collapse from fear. His faith in God’s goodness and plans is strong and will bring him eventually to the place where his trust is so complete, he simply makes the choice to believe the words God has spoken and says yes. The first generation of Israel saw the might power and works of God, but did not come to possess that kind of heart and faith.

The second generation Israelites have faith

But the second generation of the Hebrews did. They went into the promised land. They marched around Jericho for six days without a sound (who does that?), then on the seventh day they blew trumpets as God had instructed them and gave a shout…and the walls fell down! Obviously they believed what God said to them because they were doing some crazy stuff!

There is an admonition in Psalm 95:7-11 against unbelief… “Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion,

As in the day of trial in the wilderness, When your fathers tested Me; They tried Me, though they saw My work. For forty years I was grieved with that generation, And said, ‘It is a people who go astray in their hearts, And they do not know My ways.’ So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ”

So after all the signs the Hebrews saw God do on their behalf, when it came time to go into the Promised land, they balked. They did not believe. They looked at the actual giants who inhabited the land and it stopped them. They did not trust God to do what He said He would do for them. They forgot what He had already done for them. Do we do that? Do we fail to trust Him when He asks something seemingly impossible from us after He has shown us time after time what He can do on our behalf?

God has exploits for His people to do

Daniel 11:32 speaks of a “people who know their God shall be strong and carry out great exploits.” That applies to us too. Hebrews 11 recaps the names of those who have gone before us who accomplished great things for God by their faith. Those of us living under the new covenant should do no less!

I believe it is possible for believers who have experienced God’s provision, God’s healing, God’s marvelous works on their behalf to come to such a place of faith and trust, that whatever God says, they will do. They will not balk…their heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord. Circumstances cannot move them. Bad news and giant problems cannot move them because their hearts are fixed. Psalm 112:7 The words that God speaks live large in them. Believing is as simple as making the choice; they simply say yes, Lord, and move forward, doing exploits for God and His Kingdom. May we all prepare our hearts to serve Him like this!