I Will Redeem You

When Moses went back to Egypt to fulfill the command of the Lord, he and Aaron went to Pharoah and said this, “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.” Pharoah did not take this well, and instead of letting them go to make a sacrifice, he increased the work they had to do: “And Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of the people, and their officers, saying, Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish ought thereof: for they be idle; therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God. Let there more work be laid upon the men, that they may labour therein; and let them not regard vain words.” After this was put into effect, the people were not happy with Moses and Aaron because their situation had been made worse, not better: “And they said unto them, The Lord look upon you, and judge; because ye have made our savour to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to slay us.” Moses had sought to do what the Lord had commanded him, and everything appeared to be worse for the Israelites in Egypt. He complained to the Lord, “Lord, wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people? why is it that thou hast sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this people; neither hast thou delivered thy people at all” (Exodus 5:1, 6-9,21-23). Neither Moses nor the people of Israel had a proper vision of what the Lord was going to do among them, and they could not see the Lord’s timeline for delivering the people.

               This reminds me of a story that President Nelson told about his own family. He related, “Not long ago, the wife of one of our grandsons was struggling spiritually. I will call her ‘Jill.’ Despite fasting, prayer, and priesthood blessings, Jill’s father was dying. She was gripped with fear that she would lose both her dad and her testimony. Late one evening, my wife, Sister Wendy Nelson, told me of Jill’s situation. The next morning Wendy felt impressed to share with Jill that my response to her spiritual wrestle was one word! The word was myopic….  After Jill’s father passed on, the word myopic kept coming to her mind. She opened her heart to understand even more deeply that myopic meant ‘nearsighted.’ And her thinking began to shift. Jill then said, ‘Myopic caused me to stop, think, and heal. That word now fills me with peace. It reminds me to expand my perspective and seek the eternal. It reminds me that there is a divine plan and that my dad still lives and loves and looks out for me. Myopic has led me to God.’” The people of Israel, and Moses, were also myopic in that they focused only on the immediate situation and did not trust in what the Lord was doing. They were not able to see that the Lord was indeed preparing the way to deliver them from bondage. It was in this same talk that President Nelson taught that the word Israel means to “let God prevail” and he encouraged us to let the Lord prevail in our lives. And that means that even when things seem to go wrong as we try to do right, we trust in the Lord and keep striving to do what He has commanded us.

               After Moses’s complaint to the Lord when the children of Israel suffered because of his attempts to speak to Pharoah, the Lord said this: “Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh: for with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land…. I have also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers. And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant. Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments.” Even though things had gotten worse for a short time when Moses tried to do what was right, the Lord encouraged them to trust Him and His covenant to bring them out of the land of Egypt. In our own lives, we cannot give up on following Him when things get difficult or when keeping the commandments appears to make life harder. We must trust in our covenants with Him and know that He has promised to “redeem [us] with a stretched out end.” I love Jehovah’s promise to them and to each of us who covenant with Him: “And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens” (Exodus 6:1, 4-7).