When a Bad Day Only Gets Worse..

Have you ever had a truly bad day?

Have you ever had a day that went from bad to worse?

I want to read to you from a children's story titled Alexander and the Terrible,

Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judy Viart.

It says this, I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my

hair and when I got out of bed this morning, I tripped on the skateboard and

by mistake, I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and

I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

At breakfast, Anthony found a Corvette Stingray car kit in his cereal box,

and Nick found a Junior Undercover Agent code ring in his cereal box.

But in my cereal box, all I found was cereal.

I think I'll move to Australia.

In the carpool, Mrs. Gibson let Becky have the seat by the window.

Audrey and Elliot got seats by the window, too. I said I was being scrunched.

I said I was being smashed.

I said if I don't get a seat by the window, I was going to get carsick. Nobody ever answered.

I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

At school, Mrs. Dickens liked Paul's picture of the sailboat better than my

picture of the invisible castle.

At singing time, she said, I sang too loud.

At counting time, she said, I left out 16. Who needs 16 anyway?

I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

I could tell because Paul said I wasn't his best friend anymore.

He said that Philip Parker was his best friend and that Albert Moyle was his

next best friend and that I was only his third best friend.

I hope you sit on a tack, I said to Paul. I hope the next time you get a double-decker

strawberry ice cream cone, the ice cream part falls off the cone part and lands in Australia.

There were two cupcakes in Philip Parker's lunch bag and Albert got a Hershey

bar with almonds and Paul's mother gave him a piece of jelly roll that had little

coconut sprinkles on the top.

Guess whose mother forgot to put in dessert?

It was a a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

That's what it was, because after school, my mom took us all to the dentist,

and Dr. Fields found a cavity just in me.

Come back next week, he said, and I'll fix it, said Dr. Fields.

I said, no, next week I'm going to be in Australia.

On the way downstairs, the elevator got closed on my foot, and while we were

waiting for my mom to go get the card, Anthony made me fall where it was muddy,

and then I started crying because the mud Nick said I was a crybaby.

And while I was punching Nick for calling me a crybaby, my mom came back with

the car and scolded me for being muddy and fighting.

I'm having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, I told everyone. No one even answered.

So then we went to the shoe store to buy some sneakers. Anthony chose white ones with blue stripes.

Nick chose red ones with white stripes. I chose blue ones with red stripes,

but then the shoe man said, we're all sold out of the blue ones with red stripes.

So they made me buy plain old white shoes, but they can't get me to wear them.

When we picked up my dad at his

office, he said I couldn't play with his copying machine, but I forgot.

He also said to watch out for the books on his desk, and I was careful as I

could, except for my elbow.

He also said, don't fool around with his phone, but I think I called Australia.

My dad said, please don't pick him up anymore from work. It was a terrible,

horrible, no good, very bad day.

There were lima beans for dinner, and I hate limas.

There was kissing on TV, and I hate kissing. My bath was too hot. I got soup in my eyes.

My marble went down the drain, and I had to wear my railroad train pajamas.

I hate my railroad train pajamas. When I went to bed, Nick took back the pillow

he said I could keep, and the Mickey Mouse nightlight burned out, and I bit my tongue.

The cat wants to sleep with Anthony, not with me.

It has been a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day. My mom says some days

are like that, even in Australia.

Have you ever had a truly bad day? Have you ever had one of those days that

it seems like it went from bad to worse?

If so, you'll be able to identify with the man we're going to read about in

Exodus 5, verses 1-23, the man named Moses.

Exodus 5 · chapter mention

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 wilderness.

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.

Then they said, The God of the Hebrews has met with us.

Now let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices

to the Lord our God, where he may strike us with plagues or with the sword.

But the king of Egypt said, Moses and Aaron, why are you taking the people away

from their labor? Get back to your work.

Then Pharaoh said, Look, the people of the land are now numerous,

and you are stopping them from working.

That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and overseers in charge of the people.

You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks.

Let them go and gather their own straw.

But require them to make the same number of bricks as before. Don't reduce the quota.

They are lazy. That is why they are crying out, let us go and sacrifice to our God.

Make the work harder for the people so that they will keep working and pay no attention to lies.

Then the slave drivers and the overseers went out and said to the people,

this is what Pharaoh says, I will not give you any more straw.

Go and get your own straw wherever you can find it, but your work will not be reduced at all.

So the people scattered all over Egypt together other stubble to use for straw.

The slave drivers kept pressing them, saying, Complete the work required of

you for each day, just as when you had straw.

And Pharaoh's slave drivers beat the Israelite overseers they had appointed,

demanding, Why haven't you met your quota of bricks yesterday or today as before?

Then the Israelite overseers went and appealed to Pharaoh, Why have you treated.

Pharaoh said, Lazy, that's what you are, lazy.

That's why you keep saying, Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord. Now get to work.

You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your own full quota of brick.

The Israelite overseers realized they were in trouble when they were told,

you are not to reduce the number of bricks required of you for each day.

When they left Pharaoh, they found Moses and Aaron waiting to meet them.

And they said, May the Lord look on you and judge you.

You have made us obnoxious to

Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.

Moses returned to the Lord and said, Why, Lord, have you brought trouble on these people?

Is this why you sent me? Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name,

he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all.

So Moses had accepted the call of God and had left his job with his father-in-law

and begun his journey back to Egypt.

On the way, Moses met up with Aaron, whom God had sent out to meet his brother.

Isn't it great to notice how God works from both sides of an equation to make

his plans come together?

When Moses and Aaron arrived back in Egypt, they summoned a meeting of the elders

where they revealed all the words that the Lord had given them and shown them

in the signs of the people.

They realized that God had spoken to Aaron and and God had spoken to Moses on

different parts of the country, and they had come together to meet and help each other.

And yet they were given these words of the Lord to speak to the people of Israel,

to let them know that God was going to bring them out.

God had heard their cries and their pleas, and God was going to bring them out of Egypt.

The people believed, according to chapter 4, verse 31.

And now the easy part was over, and it was time to relay to Pharaoh the message of God.

Remember what we said before, Pharaoh actually means the son of Ra,

or the son of God, whom the Egyptians believed Ra was the creator God and not our God.

And so the term Pharaoh, he believed that he was God, and yet they were going

to be going to speak in the place of the true God.

The acceptance of the people was very reassuring, but confronting Pharaoh was

another story. God even told Moses that he would harden Pharaoh's heart against

letting the Israelites go.

What Moses thought was going to be an easy thing was beginning to look difficult.

Have you ever had anything like that where you think it's going to be really

easy, and you find out that as you go along, it gets harder and harder and harder

all the time, and almost to the point of impossibility?

That's because it is an easy thing when we try to do it on our own.

But God wants to reveal himself as God in our lives. So redemption and deliverance has never been easy.

It's never been something that we can do on our own.

In fact, Moses' bad day began when he gained an audience with the king.

So I want to look at some things in this passage that will remind us of what

it's like when a bad day gets even worse and what we can do about it.

And the first one is this, is when you have a bad day, recognize that the presence

of problems is not always an indication that you're not in God's will.

What I mean by that is just because we're having a bad day doesn't mean we're going against God.

It may be because we are with God and God and the enemy wants to fight us for it.

Just because things aren't going well doesn't mean that we're not doing what

God wants. So we need to analyze ourselves and analyze what we're doing and

making sure that we are in God's will and we are doing what he's asked us to do.

This scene is decidedly a dramatic one as two 80-year-old men,

Aaron older than Moses, stand before the most powerful man on earth,

the Pharaoh, the one who is called the Son of God.

Chapter 5 begins with, 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.

That was a sort of a bad day, and it all went south from there.

In verse 2, we find Pharaoh's response. Pharaoh said, who is the Lord that I

should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know this Lord.

I do not know this God you're talking about, and I will not let Israel go.

Pharaoh's response is completely negative. Pharaoh's response is characterized

by cynical arrogance when he asks, who is Yahweh that I should obey his voice to let Israel go?

I don't know this Lord you're talking about.

Almost saying, I am the only Lord you should know.

It is not that Pharaoh has never heard the name of Yahweh.

He most certainly had. It's that

he refuses to recognize the name or the request brought in by that name.

The point with Pharaoh lies in the word obey. He understood that these people

were not presenting him with a request, but a mandate from somebody greater than himself.

He does not know what it means to obey anybody else. Everybody had to obey him.

And so to appreciate the audacity of the demand, we must remember the unbridled

power and authority claimed by the Egyptian monarchs. For him, all of Egypt existed.

For him, all of the empire existed. For him, all other men lived, suffered, and died.

For him, the mighty Nile flowed. For him, vast armies of priests and magicians

and courtiers wrought and ministered.

At once, the situation worsened for the children of Israel.

The same day, Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people to make the work

harder and more burdensome on the Israelites.

I want you to note that all of these developments were taking place within about a 24-hour period.

This was pretty sudden demand and pretty sudden impact on their workload.

That same day, it says, Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people.

You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making the bricks.

Let them go and gather their own straw.

They think they've got it hard. Let's make it harder. But require them to make

the same number of bricks. Don't reduce their quota.

And then Pharaoh goes on to say, they're just a bunch of lazy Israelites.

We need to make them work a little harder.

As desperate as their plight may have been during the past 430 years of slavery

in Egypt, it's about to get worse.

Pharaoh's response was to make slavery more bitter and the bondage heavier and

the tasks more difficult.

Pharaoh, rather than releasing them, tightened his grip upon them.

So here's a perfect illustration of what happens in the lives of some people

with whom we share the life-changing message of Jesus.

Rather than accept the message that they can be freed from the chains of their

sin, they become even more busy, more burdened, and more bitter against God.

The apparent hardening of attitude tells us something.

Satan is worried. So when you are are faced with a friend or relative who just

seems to be too bound up in sin to leave their life of sin, keep praying.

It's not you that's going to win them to Jesus. It's God and the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes things have to get a whole lot worse before people are ready to hear

the truth. We see that a lot.

We see that with drug addicts and everything else. We see that with people that

they have to hit the bottom to where they're looking up just to see the bottom

of the whole to reach out for someone to help them.

The answer to the request of Aaron and Moses came in the form of additional

work so that people would no longer have the time to consider such preposterous ideas.

What had been difficult now became impossible. All day long,

all the people tried to carry out the order of Pharaoh to make the same number of quota of bricks,

but having to gather their own straw, and if they thought they didn't have time to worship then, they.

They knew that there was not going to be any town now because they're going

to be too exhausted and too consumed with their work scheduled to worship God.

Finally, they could stand no longer and they decided to make a direct appeal to Pharaoh.

So verse 15 tells us that the Israelite foreman went and appealed to Pharaoh,

why have you treated your servants this way?

Your servants are given no straw, yet you're told us to make bricks.

Your servants are being beaten, but the fault is with your own people.

The result was just what you might have expected.

The Pharaoh refused to listen to the appeal made to him by the foreman.

He said, it's your own people who are lazy. Verse 20 says that when they left

Pharaoh, they found Moses and Aaron waiting to meet them.

Yeah, what did he say? What did he say? What did he say? He's going to let us go.

Yeah, right. And they said, may the Lord look upon you, speaking to Moses and

Aaron, may the Lord look upon you and judge you.

You have made us a stint to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.

As the foreman came from their meeting with Pharaoh, they met Aaron and Moses,

and they used extremely strong language to point out to Moses and Aaron it was

their fault that Pharaoh was making it harder on them.

So when you have a bad day, recognize that the presence of problems is not always

an indication that you're not in God's will, even though it may seem like it.

The second thing we want to see in this is that when you have a bad day,

recognize that God does not have to work according to our plans or our timetables.

Have you ever wondered, have you ever prayed that way, Lord,

make this happen and all that. It's like, Lord, give me patience and give it to me now.

But wait, that's a joke. Anyway, but we sometimes do that, don't we?

We seem to think that God must work in our timetables. There are two mistakes

that the foreman and perhaps the children of Israel as a whole have made.

First, they maligned the anointed of God, and they maligned the character of Moses and Aaron.

Second, they presumed that they knew how God would work, and that's probably

the most significant mistake.

Never assume that you know exactly how God's going to work. God is going to work.

Romans 8.28 tells us that he's going to work for the good of all those who are

called according to his purpose, those who call upon his name.

And he's going to work for our good. It just may not be the way we think it's going to be.

Didn't work the way they anticipated and they were offended.

President Christians can also experience uncertainty if they have certain expectations

of how God should act in a certain situation.

How should God deal with what I'm going through?

Moses should not have been surprised by Pharaoh's reaction.

In fact, God had warned him what would happen if he thought that he was to to

announce that Pharaoh should release the children of Israel,

and Pharaoh would turn around immediately and say, Absolutely, you may go.

Then he hadn't been listening to what God had told him, because the Lord had

warned him that it would be difficult contest,

and that Pharaoh would even harden his heart against the Lord before he finally

relented and let Israel go.

So when you have a bad day, recognize that God does not have to work according

to our plans or our timetable.

And then third, when you have a bad day, recognize that when problems abound.

Be careful which way you run.

I want you to consider for a moment how the response of the people must have affected Moses.

All those memories of rejection and inadequacy came flooding back to the heart of Moses.

Remember that it was in Egypt when he saw the Egyptian kill the Israelite,

and he went and killed an Egyptian and buried him in the sand.

It was then when he had the rejection of the people of Israel, and he had to leave.

It must have had a strong urge. He must have had a strong urge to run back to the desert and hide.

Can you imagine having a strong urge to leave and go back to pure desperation

in a desert. And Moses did run.

When he had to face trials and opposition, don't you want to know that it seems

like sometimes we just want to run and hide, don't we?

When trials come and tribulations come and hard times come against us,

we just want want to hide.

We want to get away from it all, close the doors, and lick our wounds.

But this time Moses ran straight to the source of strength.

Moses poured out all of his anxiety to the only one who could answer his questions.

Verse 22 in chapter 5 tells us, Moses returned to the Lord and said,

O Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people?

Is this why you sent me? Ever since Since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your

name, he has brought trouble upon this people, and you have not rescued your

people at all. Look at what's happening here.

Moses is turning right back into the face of God and saying,

Look what's happening, God. You told me to go through this, and this is what's happening.

And I think God is just thinking there, Moses, I told you.

I told you it would get worse. I told you Pharaoh would harden his heart. But don't worry.

In the end, Pharaoh will relent. Moses is saying, where did I go wrong?

He had stood before Pharaoh and repeated almost word for word what God had told him to say.

When things do not go the way we think we should, we begin to ask the how and

why questions. when things don't happen the way we think they should, we begin to ask, why me?

Why me, Lord? Why now? Why has this happened to me?

What have I done to deserve these problems?

Why did I ever get my hope up? Why did I ever accept this job?

If God's on my side, why is this happening to me? Why do bad things happen to good people?

And how am I ever going to get through this one? In verse 1 of chapter 6,

we find it says, Then the Lord said to Moses, Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh.

Because of my mighty hand, he will let you go.

Because of my mighty hand, he will drive Israel out of this country.

God also said to Moses this, I am the Lord.

When we get to the bottom of the pit, and it seems like all we can do is look

up and see the bottom, that's when we reach out to God and God says,

now let me take care of this.

Notice that God didn't reprimand Moses for asking questions.

He never shames or slaps you in the face when you come to him.

When the disciples were out on the boat with Jesus in the middle of the storm.

Jesus didn't say, you ridiculous people, how terrible are you?

You'll never understand.

He says, O ye of little faith, don't you know that you could simply speak—.

And this would happen. God doesn't slap us in the face when we run to him.

In chapter 6, God reassures Moses of his intent and purposes.

Instead of criticizing Moses for asking why, God just says, just wait and see what I'll do.

God's response was that it was time to impress Pharaoh to show the Pharaoh and

the whole world who really was God.

It wasn't Pharaoh, but God needed to show to Pharaoh who really was God.

The king needed to get a dose of God's power.

And so we see that when you have a bad day, we need to recognize that when problems

abound, be careful which way you run.

And then finally, the fourth one is when you have a bad day,

recognize that God's plans and purposes have not changed.

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

God still wants to reveal himself to us.

He is the one and only, the true one,

the true God, and he wants to bring deliverance from the power of sin.

This whole atmosphere, this whole scene in Israel and Egypt, excuse me, Egypt,

this whole scene is a microcosm, a small telling of the story of deliverance

of God's people, which we will see in the New Testament, which comes through Jesus.

Moses was the one who was going to be deliverer of the people of Israel from Egypt.

It wasn't Moses that did it, it was God that did it through Moses, right?

So it's a picture of deliverance from the land of sin, the land of Egypt, the land of slavery.

Same thing is that Jesus is the deliverance from the land of sin and slavery that we know. No.

So this is just a little small storytelling of what it means to be delivered.

No matter how beaten down we are, how crushed or how broken or how desperate

we become, God still cares for us.

God has great compassion for us and for our need.

No matter what our problem is, no matter the sin, the shame that he desires

to help us with, we are more important to God than what we have done or what we have accomplished.

He has created us in his own image, and we are his children.

And a great father does nothing but give the best to his children, and that's our God.

This may be difficult to understand in a world that measures us by our accomplishments.

It may be difficult to understand that in a world that looks at success as how

many zeros you have behind the dollars dollars in your income or your bank account,

it might be hard to understand when we look at a world that looks at fame and

success as who's in the pages of People magazine. I don't even know if that still exists, but...

But we know that we are front and center in the picture of God's book.

We know that God is looking for us and leading us in all that we must do.

Too many times we allow ourselves to focus on the difficulties of the moment

instead of the God of the universe.

He's saying, get your eyes back on me. Remember who I am.

I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and if I can do for them what I did

for them, I can do for you what I'm going to do for you now,

and it's going to be great.

If God can do for those in the Old Testament what he did, he can certainly do

what he intends for us to have as long as we surrender to him.

Too many times we find ourselves focused on the bad.

We look at how bad is it for us. we wonder what kind of things are going on and why is it so bad.

The New Testament reader is also reminded, let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, and until we fix our eyes on Jesus,

we will not be able to handle those days that go from bad to worse.

When your schedule presses, when your prospects thin, in, when your hope burns

low, when people disappoint you, when events turn against you, when dreams die,

when the walls close in, when the prognosis seems grand, when your heart breaks.

Boy, doesn't that sound like life?

When those things happen, look at the Lord and keep on looking at him.

Keep your eyes focused on Jesus, and he will deliver you.

Beginning in verse 6, the Lord reminds Moses of his promises.

Therefore, he says to the Israelites, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out

from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched

arm and a mighty hand of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.

Then you will know that I am the Lord your God who brought you up out from under

the yoke of oppression of the Egyptians, and I will bring you to the land I

swore with an uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

I will give it to you as a possession, because I am Yahweh the Lord.

Seven times in verses 6 through 8, God says, I will.

He says, I will bring you out. I will rescue you. I will redeem you.

I will take you to be as my people.

I will be your God. I will bring you into the land. I will give you as an inheritance.

He doesn't say, I've done it. He says, I will.

And however, in spite of all these reassurances from the Lord,

things just seemed to kept getting worse and worse and worse to the point that

Moses said, I'm going to go to Australia.

Well, maybe he didn't. Pharaoh had already refused his request,

and now Moses found out that he no longer had any credibility with the Israelites.

Their anguish of spirit and cruel bondage had overwhelmed him.

So what does Moses do when his bad day takes a bad turn for the worse?

He came back to the Lord again.

Moses had been discouraged, he was frustrated, he felt helpless,

and he kept coming back to the Lord.

Charles Swindoll tells us the remarkable story of the English pulpit.

William Cowper as a remarkable example of a man coming to the end of his rope.

He says, Cowper found himself so deep in discouragement and despair,

he tried to put an end to it all by drinking poison.

But God graciously led somebody to find him. His stomach was pumped, and he survived.

As soon as he recovered from that, the despairing writer hired a coach to take

him down to the Thames River, in which he intended to plunge himself in the dark swirling waters.

The driver of the coach, however, would have nothing to do with it.

He restrained Cowper, got him back into the coach, and drove him home. Failed again.

Frustrated with that attempt, William Cowper found a knife in the privacy of

his home and attempted to fall upon it, and as he did, if you would believe it, the blade broke.

Still not deterred, he rigged up a rope in the basement, put his neck in the

noose, and dropped into thin air, but someone found him before he strangled and took him down.

He couldn't even kill himself.

Finally, in the depth of sorrow, he drove himself to the book of Romans,

and in the pages of that book, he found a passage that brought him to his knees

and to faith in Jesus Christ.

Years later, as a mature man of God, William Cowper composed this now familiar hymn.

God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.

He plants his footsteps on the sea and rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable minds of never-failing skill.

He treasures up his bright designs and works his sovereign will.

God will always come to the aid of his people when they cry out.

Moses, armed with only a piece of wood that he'd found in the desert as a piece

of wood that he used as a staff,

and assisted by his brother Aaron, began waging war on the mightiest force in the world at the time.

He did not do it alone.

A war that ultimately left the throne of Egypt vacant.

In fact, the Pharaoh died, and during the time, Egypt launched into a time of

disrepair in the country as the Israelites left.

Their entire workforce was gone, and so God had overcome.

The Pharaoh was dead, and all of Egypt was in mourning, but the people of Israel were free.

Satan is trying to defeat us. He's trying to turn our very bad days into worse days.

He's trying to overcome us.

He's trying to destroy us. He's trying to supplant God, and God won't have anything

to do with it. The question comes is, what about you?

What will you make of your bad days? Will you turn to Christ?

Will you ask him to deliver you from those bad days, or will you sit and sulk

in what seems to turn to a very bad day?

I would just venture to say, you aren't going to find it in Israel and Australia.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we close in this time, as we look at what Moses

and the people of Israel went through, even as they were being delivered from

the hand of Pharaoh and the hand of slavery,

we understand, Lord, that you have delivered us as well.

And oftentimes, we get so bound up by what seems to be bad in our lives.

And you are gracious, and you are merciful, and you deliver us from all those things.

Lord, we just need to depend on your timing and not ours. In Jesus' name, amen.