When God’s people are confronted with God’s Word, we should listen. This concept ought to go without saying, but unfortunately, we don’t always do what we are supposed to do. Such was the case with Israel. They were confronted over and over with the direct words of God with mixed results. Sometimes, they responded immediately to what God commanded. Sometimes, they…didn’t.

In Exodus 6, God has been speaking to the children of Israel via Moses. He has established and is establishing His covenant with them. He says that they will be His people and that He will be their God. He then tells them about what He will do for them as His people.

But then we reach verse 9, where we find out that Israel “hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.” Basically, because their situation was hard, they didn’t feel like listening to God’s Word. Sometimes, in trials, we are driven TO God’s Word, but other times, we allow our circumstances to be the reason we DON’T listen.

Then Moses goes to God with the following complaint: “If Your people won’t listen to me, how can I expect this worldly ruler to listen to me?” (6:12 paraphrased)

It’s easy sometimes to look at the world around us and think about how this country was founded upon biblical principles, yet our society shows a complete disregard for anything coming from the mouth God. But how can we, as God’s people, expect the wicked world around us to respect the Word of God when we don’t respect it ourselves. We pick and choose what we want to obey. We soften our stance where the Bible is clear, and make dogma where the Bible doesn’t.

We put ourselves in the place of God, which is no different from the world. They just do it without the looks of being God’s people. They go about to establish their own form of morality based on their own perception of what is right, rather than the absolute standard of God’s Word.

A prime example of this is given in Matthew 19 and is found in the 21st century as well. God said in Genesis 2:24 that a man was to leave his father and mother, and hold tightly (cleave) to his wife, yet the children of Israel, in their hard hearts were not holding tightly to their wives, but were putting them away. In that society, a woman had no way to take care of herself, so Moses established a rule that if you put away your wife, you had to give her a declaration of divorce in order that she could still be taken care of. (see Deuteronomy 24)

That was never God’s intent, but because of their unwillingness to obey God’s plan, Moses had to establish a “fallback plan.” Anytime we have a fallback plan from God’s plan, we are set up for failure.

So the question today is, If you won’t listen to God’s Word, why should you expect anyone else to?

Listen. Heed. Obey.