In prep for a message on the life of Moses for this Sunday at Vintage Church. I’m reading through Exodus. Today as I read Exodus 5 I was blown away. Moses first request to Pharaoh prompted a reaction that hit me like a ton of bricks (no pun intended).
1 Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the desert.’” 2 Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD and I will not let Israel go.” 3 Then they said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Now let us take a three-day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the LORD our God, or he may strike us with plagues or with the sword.” Exodus 5:1-3
“They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’ 9 Make the work harder for the men so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies.” Exodus 5:8b-9
Moses is asking that his people be allowed to step away from their work in order to worship God. Pharaoh’s response is to accuse them of being lazy and increase their work load.
We have an enemy that continues those same tricks on the people of God today. We often define ourselves, and others, by how hard they work. Which isn’t always a bad thing. A strong work ethic is a great attribute. A necessary one for a follower of Jesus. But REST and WORSHIP are also commands of scripture. For some, Satan tries to convince them that’s laziness. In doing so, many feel a load of guilt for the time the carve out to do “nothing”. The reality is “nothing” times can mean everything. When we escape from work and open ourselves up to pure, uninterrupted worship, God moves. When you stop working in order to worship God you’re not lazy, you’re obedient.
Pharoah also increased the Hebrew people’s work load in the hopes that they would get too busy to worry about worship. If the work was more demanding then they would not have time to give attention to God’s agenda and can solely focus on his. Satan uses this same trick. He loves to get you too busy to think about your Creator. He wants your mind cluttered and spirit drained. Satan loves when you burn yourself out. When you’re physically spent you aren’t very useful to God. That’s exactly what the enemy wants.
Don’t fall for the trick of busyness. Set priorities! Learn to say no to good things and yes to God things. Slow down! Hard work is great and should be valued, but it can consume us so much that it squeezes out the worship. And yes, I know, often work is a form of worship. When we are serving His church and His people. But there must be room for moments of work free worship. Jesus did it!
