Readings: Exodus 12:37-42; Psalm 136; Matthew 12:14-21.
When God sent Moses to Pharaoh to demand the release of the people of Israel, Pharaoh stood his ground that it will never happen. Pharaoh was a man digging his heels in with God and refusing to yield to the “Great I AM.”
Pharaoh actually tried all he could to insist that His will prevailed over God’s will, what was the end of it? An irreparable calamity and colossal loss. Pharaoh finally gave up and let go of God’s people. He once asked who is the Lord that he should listen to Him; God revealed His might and Pharaoh bowed in defeat.
Today, the people of Israel were finally hurried out of the land of Egypt.
The lesson is that no one can contend with God, no one battles with God and win, God’s will prevails at last.
This is the same with the story of Joseph which we just completed, His brothers stood against his dreams and God’s plans for him but their enmity was used as a catalyst to speed up the fulfillment, they ended up paying more homage than they swore never to do.
In the Gospel, we see how resolved the Pharisees were to kill Jesus and put an end once and for all to the ‘Jesus problems.’ Unfortunately, that ‘Jesus’ problem hasn’t died till today. God will always prevail at last.
Secondly, we are told that the people of Israel spent four hundred and thirty years in Egypt. Their last fifty or so years were horrible years of torture and indescribable persecution. They must have cried and cried over and again perhaps losing hope.
However, at God’s time, He rescued them. Ecclesiastes 3:11, He has made all things beautiful in its own time.
Sometimes we also wish we can rush God, sometimes we think He is slower than He should, we want Him to act quickly, but then He has made all things beautiful in its designated time, He acts according to His providence and grand design, He is not influenced by our desperation or compelled by our impatience, His timing is perfect.
I acknowledge that the process and period of waiting can be very difficult, stressful and painful; uncertainty about the outcome of waiting makes it even harder. So can we pray today for a deeper faith, for peaceful submission to God and greater patience knowing that God’s time is always the best?
Sermon preached by Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Baraka-Gukena Okami on July 17, 2021