God our Encourager - Exodus 6:6-12 (02.15.2026)

Please remain standing as a way of honoring the reading of God's word.

Today's scripture reading comes from Exodus 6, 6-12. After I finish reading,

I will say, This is the word of the Lord.

Please respond by saying, Thanks be to God.

Say therefore to the people of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out

from under the burdens of the Egyptians.

And I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched

arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God.

And you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from

under the burdens of the Egyptians.

I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.

Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses because

of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.

So the Lord said to Moses, Go in, tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt,

to let the people of Israel go out of this land.

But Moses said to the Lord, Behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me.

How then shall the Pharaoh listen to me? For I am of uncircumcised lips.

This is the word of the Lord.

All right. Well, as you may have just figured out, we're going to take a break

just for this week from the Gospel of John.

We'll pick back up next week in John chapter 2. So if you will,

John 2 · chapter mention

open up in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 6 so that you can follow along with me this morning.

Exodus 6 · chapter mention

I'll never forget 15 years ago when Tiffany and I were getting ready to leave

to go to Vermont to plant our first church. We were meeting with our church

planting coach named John Wooster.

This guy was the goat. He planted like nine churches all over the world.

He planted in Russia, Atlanta, Texas, California, Canada.

I mean, he's incredible church planter.

And so we were sitting at a dinner with him, trying to soak up every bit of

information, every bit of advice that we could get from him before we left to go plant in Vermont.

And before we left that dinner, I looked at him and I said, John,

if you could just distill down all of your experience into one piece of advice

to us before we set out to plant this church, what would it be?

And he didn't hesitate. He looked at us and he said, be on guard against all

kinds of discouragement.

And he said, and he looked at both of us and he said, and watch each other.

He said, when your spouse begins to get discouraged, a red flag should go up

and you should immediately jump into action to begin fighting for their encouragement.

I'll be honest with you. It was not the advice that I was expecting.

Not at all. But I didn't forget it. I didn't forget it, even though it took

years, really, for me to understand how true this was.

And the reason I think is because discouragement comes at us in so many different ways.

It comes at us so persistently in life that we oftentimes just don't pick up on what it is.

So discouragement can come at us in the form of, I remember when we first moved

to Vermont, our kids suddenly struggling with night terrors.

They'd never had that trouble before.

It can come at us through health problems. It can come at us through financial problems.

It can come at us through marital problems. It can come at us through the news.

It doesn't take one form, this discouragement that is coming at us at all times.

It took hitting an all-time low in my ministry in 2020 during COVID,

going through a really hard season in Vermont, they clamped down on the churches.

They wouldn't allow churches to gather together for a long time and dealing

with some issues within our church, some divisiveness within our church.

And I hit an all-time low.

It was finally in that season that I really began to understand how true that advice was.

It was then that I came to know God, as Paul describes him in Romans 15,

5, as the God of encouragement.

The God of encouragement. Unfortunately, the seasons of discouragement that

pastors often face is not unique to pastoral ministry.

It's something that we all go through. It's something that we all deal with in the Christian life.

And this morning in our passage in Exodus 6, we're going to see Moses battling

discouragement in his ministry.

And we're going to see God faithfully walking him through that.

At the end of our lives, nothing matters more than this one thing,

that our confidence is still firmly set on Jesus.

It doesn't matter how many people we've impacted or how much money we made or

how successful we were in our field or whatever it is that we might look to

as the things that really matter in this life.

There is nothing that will matter more than that.

At the end of the race, our confidence is still firmly in Jesus Christ.

And that's why this topic of discouragement,

encouragement is so important because that's what's at stake.

When I use the word encouragement this morning, what I'm thinking of,

What I have in mind is the biblical way that we talk about encouragement,

which would be one example, a great example would be in Acts chapter 14,

Acts 14 · chapter mention

when Paul and Barnabas, after having planted churches in Lystra and Iconium,

come back through those cities, it says,

strengthening the souls of the disciples and encouraging the churches there.

That's what we mean biblically. when we talk about encouragement,

we're not just talking about an emotional high.

We're talking about strengthened souls, souls that can withstand hardship,

souls that can withstand trials.

That's what encouragement is about.

So let's dive into this story in Exodus.

And let me just remind us, you're all familiar with the story,

but let me just remind us where we are when we get to Exodus chapter 6.

Exodus 6 · chapter mention

So the Lord calls Moses through the burning bush. The angel speaks to him in

the burning bush in chapter 3.

And you'll remember that Moses has some initial pushback to that,

right? He's not eloquent, he says.

And the Lord says, well, eventually the Lord says, fine, I'll send Aaron with you.

So they go and they address the elders of Israel.

And in the end of chapter four, verse 31, they, after telling the elders of

Israel who are going to go back and spread the word, what God's about to do, they respond in faith.

They bow their heads and they worship. So they're off to a good start.

But then in chapter five, Moses and Aaron go and they tell Pharaoh, let my people go.

They start this process and you know what happens. Pharaoh hardens his heart.

And instead of letting them go, he tells the taskmasters to increase the load

required of the Israelites.

And so they're forced to make more bricks with less material and they are incredibly discouraged.

They turn to Moses. You can look at it in verse 21 of chapter five.

They say, the Lord look on you and judge because you've made us stink in the

sight of Pharaoh and his servants and have put a sword in their hand to kill

us. That's pretty discouraged.

And then Moses responds with his own discouragement.

Let's look at, let's just look at that verse 22.

He says, he turns to the Lord, O Lord, why have you done evil to this people?

Why did you ever send me?

For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this

people and you've not delivered your people at all.

And then chapter six, where we're focusing, it's an interesting chapter because

the deliverance of Israel doesn't, that story doesn't advance at all.

In other words, there's no interaction with Pharaoh in chapter six.

What happens in Exodus six is God's response to what's happened in chapter five,

to the discouragement of Israel and to the discouragement of Moses.

God responds to that. He leaps into action when he sees his servant turning

to him saying, why did you send me?

This isn't working. What am I doing here?

And so I want us to see how God encourages.

Point number one, he starts with the covenant.

He starts with the covenant. Maybe you picked up on it in the scripture reading.

First verse, he basically tells him, Moses, you're gonna see what I said I was gonna do.

And then verses two through five, this is covenant renewal language.

He spoke to Moses and said to him, I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham,

to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name, the Lord,

I did not make myself known to them.

I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan,

the land in which they lived as sojourners.

Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel,

whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant.

It's covenant. This is where the Lord begins when he sets out to encourage his

discouraged servant, Moses.

He begins with the covenant. And then verses six through eight,

he says, say to the people of Israel.

And in these verses, he gives seven, I will statements.

Seven, I will bring you out from your burdens.

I will deliver you from slavery. I will redeem you. I will take you to be my people.

I will be your God. I will bring you into the land.

I will give it to you. Incredible.

What an incredible list of promises. These are the very promises that were given to Abraham.

He is restating his covenant, what he has promised.

And as we fight against discouragement in our lives, as we, before we ever even

get discouragement, where we put our feet, where we stand firm is on the covenant.

This is where we should always begin.

That God in Christ Jesus has fulfilled the promises that he made.

The promise to Abraham that through his offspring, all the nations would be

blessed was fulfilled in Christ.

Christ is the offspring of Abraham.

Christ is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant.

All the promises of God find their yes in him.

And we, friends, believers are in Christ.

We are in Christ. And so all of God's promises are ours in Christ.

Regardless of the challenges we face, this is where we begin.

We have reason to rejoice no matter what we face in this life because of this covenant.

We are secure in him.

We are holy in him. We are righteous in him.

We are adopted in him. We are forgiven in him.

All the spiritual blessings are ours in the heavenlies because of our union with Christ.

So what do we do with that? What do we do with the fact that we know that we

are in an unbreakable covenant with God Almighty through His Son, Jesus Christ?

Instead of listening to ourselves, we need to do what David did in the Psalms,

and we need to preach to ourselves.

You've read those Psalms where David says things like, why are you downcast, oh my soul?

Who's he talking to? His own soul. He's talking to himself.

You see, we always have a conversation going on in our heads.

And what scripture teaches us is that we're not just to listen to ourselves.

We're to preach to ourselves.

We're to recognize when we are downcast and we're to get up,

strengthen ourselves in the Lord and say, why are you downcast soul?

Hope in God for I shall again praise him. That's what David says.

He says to himself, bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.

And so the first application, church, is that rather than listening to ourselves,

we need to preach to ourselves.

We need to preach the gospel to ourselves. We need, like David said,

to forget not his benefits.

We need to rehearse those things again and again and again and again and again.

It's the ground on which we stand.

So when you sense discouragement coming on and before you sense discouragement

coming on, preach to yourself.

God has delivered you from the domain of darkness. He has redeemed you with

the blood of Jesus. Your sins have been paid for.

He is committed to you.

He has given you his spirit as a down payment. He is going to give you an inheritance

beyond your wildest dreams.

When we get tempted to be discouraged, which is no sin, but when we get tempted to be discouraged,

nothing could be more encouraging than the truth that God is unwaveringly for us.

He is so for us that He is working all things together for our good.

He is so unwaveringly for us that He gave us his son. Will he not with him give us all things?

And so this is where we begin. We stand firm on the covenant.

We find our footing when the waves of this life knock us down.

We find our footing again here. This is where God begins.

The God of encouragement looks to Moses and he begins with his covenant.

Secondly, let's take a look at the crisis. The crisis. Why is discouragement a big deal?

We've started to talk about that. But look at Moses' questions and complaints

in verse 22 again of chapter 5.

He says, why did you even send me?

Right? Why did you ever send me? That's the question of a discouraged man.

I'll never forget in our first church plant in, in Vermont, we were planting

in a small town and, and really there was only one place that you could gather

people and it was the community center.

And so we were renting the community center. We started our church and we were

just a few months into that.

And I got a phone call from one of the ladies that was coming to our church.

And she said, did you know that our church is on the agenda for tonight's town hall meeting?

And I said, no, that's interesting. She said, we are.

I said, okay. So I went to the town hall meeting that night and I'd been to these before.

Usually there were about four people at a town hall meeting. It's a very small town.

And I walked into the room, and it was standing room only. There were 40 people there.

And the moderator asks, he says.

If you plan on saying something this evening, would you please raise your hand? Forty hands went up.

I went, oh boy.

And I sat there for probably two hours and listened to person after person after

person, 40 people, I counted them.

Explain why they didn't want us in their town, why we shouldn't be there,

why we were legally not allowed to be using a town community center because

of the separation of church and state. I mean, slander.

They lied. They said we were destroying the place. It was a brutal meeting.

It's tempting when we encounter a setback to feel like Moses in this passage.

Lord, why did you even send me?

And I remember thinking to myself as I sat there, Lord, These people don't even

want a church in their town. Why here?

Why here? But look at what God responds to Moses in 6.1.

Now you shall see what I will do.

You're going to see what I'm going to do. In other words, what feels like a

setback, it's no setback.

God is in control. his plan, his plans cannot be thwarted.

And so the next year we spent, we, we met outside parks. We met in a bar for a while.

We met in six different places for that next year. And God provided a space

in what had been a Unitarian Universalist church for almost 200 years.

And we started meeting in that space. And when we did, when we were back in

the town, in a building, people flooded in.

And one of the things that we heard again and again and again was,

we saw how you responded when the town kicked you out of the memorial hall.

And we've been watching. And we just needed to come and see what this is all about.

You see, God's plans aren't thwarted because somebody tries to oppose us. It's part of it.

It's part of it. His plans aren't thwarted because it snows two weekends in

a row, right after we started.

Or because a small number show up on a rainy day.

God's going to do what he's going to do.

And it's so hard for us to see it when we're in the middle of it.

You know, when we read the story, it's so easy for us.

We know how this turns out for Israel, but they were just in the daily grind of it.

And that's how discouragement works. We can't see what God is doing.

But Moses' response is right. He turns to the Lord, right?

He turns to God and he says, why are you doing this?

And you see that God's response is not to beat Moses down.

He won't break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick.

He's going to encourage those that turn to him in their discouragement.

Discouragement, friends, is dangerous. And that's one of the biggest things

I want us to take away this morning.

Discouragement is serious.

It is. Look at what happens when Moses is sent to Israel with this unbelievably powerful word.

Verse 9, Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to

Moses because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.

Was God's word lacking in power? Absolutely not.

Not in the least. And yet it fell on deaf ears. Why?

Because their discouragement had led them to unbelief.

Discouragement is not a sin. It is not.

But it's dangerous because it can lead us to unbelief, which is a sin.

And when we get to the point where we cannot receive the word of the Lord,

when we cannot believe the promises of God.

These are the same people who believed it two chapters earlier.

When discouragement leads us to the point to where the promises that we once

believed, we now begin to doubt. This is deadly serious.

It's been said that discouragement precedes destruction.

No one ever destroys their life from a place of a great, encouraging, vibrant walk with God?

No, the first thing that happens is discouragement. This is where the enemy starts.

It's to get us, our eyes away from God and focused on our circumstances and

worried and not believing the promises anymore.

The joy of the Lord is our strength.

That's what Nehemiah 8 says. The joy of the Lord is our strength.

And the Bible says to rejoice in the Lord always.

And the Bible says that there are going to be trials and tribulations and suffering in this life.

But it also says that we are sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

So even in our sorrows, there is a way in which we can rejoice.

Going back to where we stand, we're secure in Christ.

So we must fight against discouragement because of its danger.

Look at how it weakens Moses in verse 12 after verse 9 tells us what happens

to the Israelites. Look at verse 12.

Moses said to the Lord, Behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me.

How then shall Pharaoh listen to me? For I am of uncircumcised lips.

He's saying, once again, I'm not eloquent.

Moses slips back to those old lies that he was believing when God called him in the first place.

And I think that this is what tends to happen to us.

When we get discouraged, we're prone to believe the old lies that we once believed.

And it weakens us because it weakens our faith.

So discouragement precedes destruction

it is it is something that

we must fight third point

the contagion the contagion why is moses discouraged in verse 12 and why why

for that matter is he discouraged in verse 22 of chapter 5 it's because of his

interaction with the israelites It didn't come out of nowhere.

He's discouraged in both instances because of what was said in a conversation with the Israelites.

Moses had been encouraged by the Lord in chapter six, verses one through eight.

And then he goes and he delivers that word to the Israelites and their response is unbelief.

And now he's discouraged. What happened? It's contagious.

It's incredibly contagious. I think probably the greatest example of this is

found in Numbers chapter 13, when the 12 spies are sent into the promised land to spy out the land.

Numbers 13 · chapter mention

And you know the story, only two come back, Joshua and Caleb,

saying, if the Lord is pleased with us, he's going to give us the land. Let's go. Let's do this.

All 12 spies saw the same circumstance, right? All 12.

They all looked at all the same stuff.

And yet only two came back with an encouraging report.

10 of the 12 come back saying, their cities are too big. The walls are too fortified.

The people are too big. There's too many of them.

Their armies are way more powerful than us. And we can't do this. And what happened?

What happened when those 10 spies came back with a report that failed to take

into account the promise of God that he was going to give them the land?

It spread like wildfire through the camp.

And before you know it, millions of Israelites are done with this mission.

They're ready to stone Moses and Aaron and go back to Egypt. How did that happen?

Discouragement is contagious. It is incredibly contagious.

So what do we do with this knowledge? Well, number one, it helps us to understand

that the fight to remain encouraged isn't just about us.

Isn't just about us. So lest you be tempted to think, you know what?

I'm fine with being discouraged. I'm just going to lie down in it.

Know this, it won't stay with you. It will pass on to others.

Our discouragement comes out because out of the heart, the mouth speaks.

And so it comes out of our mouths. We don't even think about it.

It's not a conscious decision. We just do it and it spreads to other people.

And you know, the first person it spreads to is our spouse, our closest confidant.

If you're married, that's where our discouragement goes first.

That's why looking back on our church planting coach's advice, I see how huge this was.

Not only is our spouse our closest confidant, but our spouse is also our greatest

encourager. the person most likely to hold our arms up.

And so if we spread our discouragement to the one that is most likely to encourage

us, our first encourager, and we drag our spouse down with us,

now we've got a bigger problem.

So here's where we need to start. We need to start with recognizing how powerful our words are.

Proverbs says, death and life are in the power of the tongue.

Our words have the ability to point people.

To the living God and the hope that's found in him, or to lead people away from

faith, from trust, from hope.

Every word we speak, every text we send, every email, we should consider every word.

We should let no corrupting talk come out of our mouths, but only as is good

for building up as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

So that's the first thing we do with it. And then the second thing that we do

with it is we need to be really, really aware of what we let in.

If discouragement is contagious, and it is, then we need to pay attention to

what we pay attention to.

The first time that I ever really realized this was in 2020 when,

I mean, the news is doom and gloom enough, but as you know, the news just got super doom and gloom.

And as I was going through this season of real discouragement,

there came a season where I just said, I have to shut the news off.

And if there's something really important for me to know, somebody will tell me.

Because I just couldn't handle those inputs. Because discouragement is contagious.

And I had to think about what podcasts I was listening to.

I had to think about the conversations I was having and when I was having them.

Because pastors are really prone to discouragement on Sunday nights and Monday mornings.

I had to think about who are the encouragers in my church and I need to get around them.

So if discouragement is contagious, what about encouragement?

Yes, encouragement is very contagious.

Encouragement is contagious as well. And that is why Paul goes around in chapter 14.

And again, in all of his missionary journeys, he comes back through encouraging the churches.

It spreads. It strengthens our souls.

And so in Exodus 5-6, discouragement has spread from Israel to Moses.

So we need to pay attention to what we're paying attention to.

We need to be thoughtful about our thoughts. We need to be careful about our inputs.

We need to be careful about our words because everything we say matters.

Third, or fourth, the cure.

How does God respond to Moses' discouragement?

Moses said, how will Pharaoh listen to me if Israel wouldn't listen to me?

And what does the Lord do in verse 13?

But the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron and gave them a charge about the people

of Israel and about Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to bring the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt.

So he's already reminded him of this covenant.

And Moses is still discouraged. And so what does the Lord do? He keeps pursuing.

God, our encourager, he keeps pursuing. He keeps speaking. And what does he say?

He gives him the same charge that he's already given him.

He reminds him of his task. He doesn't give him a new charge.

He reminds him of the old one. It reminds me of the story of Elijah.

Elijah is an incredible story about discouragement and how God is our encourager.

Elijah was on the literal and figurative mountaintop.

Remember, he challenges the prophets of Baal, calls down fire,

the Lord responds, burns up the offering.

Baal is proved to be nothing. Wipes out 450 prophets of Baal.

I mean, Israel sees it all.

And the next thing you know, he's sitting under a broom tree saying,

Lord, you might as well just take me out.

What? What happened between the mountaintop and the broom tree.

Jezebel put out a threat and Elijah gets discouraged.

He gets discouraged because of one text, one phone call, one email.

And what does the Lord do? How does the Lord restore him? You know the story.

He goes, he gets in the cave and the Lord's not in the fire.

He's not in the earthquake. He's not in the wind, right?

He speaks to him in a still, small voice, just like he speaks again to Moses.

What we need when we're discouraged, we need the Lord's word.

We need to hear from him again, a personal word.

I don't just mean going through the motions and reading ink on a page.

I mean coming to the living God through his word and letting him speak personally.

And what does he say to Elijah? He says.

Back to work. He says, I want you to go anoint this guy and anoint this guy.

And I want you to go find Elisha. He's going to be your successor.

Get back to doing what prophets do. How does God encourage his discouraged servants?

He comes to them and he speaks to them through his word and he calls them back to faithful obedience.

We need the same thing when we get discouraged. We don't need any new promises.

We need to believe the old ones.

We don't need any new assignments.

We just need to get back to doing the one that he's given us.

We need to remember why God called us in the first place.

This is the cure for discouragement. It's the God of encouragement speaking to us through his word.

And you'll know this and And you'll see this in this passage.

He speaks to us not only directly through his word, but he also speaks to us

through other believers.

And he's trying to do that. He's trying to encourage Israel through Moses in this passage.

Moses, take this word of encouragement to my people.

This is Hebrews 10, verse 25. Don't neglect meeting together as the habit of some, but what?

Hebrews 10:25

Encourage one another. and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

Worse things get, the more we need it. We need to encourage one another all

the more as the day draws near.

The God of encouragement will, by His Spirit, use His Word and His people to

persistently pursue us and to encourage us.

Let me close with a couple stories of how He's done this for me.

So when we first moved to Vermont, we moved, we sold our dream home to my,

I had been in the building business and I'd built our dream home.

And so we moved from that, we sold that.

And I took the U-Haul with all of our things up first. I said,

I don't know how we're going to get a house, but God's going to provide.

And the day that Tiffany and the kids were flying up, I got a house.

But it was not our dream house.

It was an old 1970s dark, damp ski chalet with cedar walls, cobwebs all over it, 900 square feet.

And I was unloading the U-Haul by myself, pulling things in and pulling cobwebs

down. And I'm telling you, this house was dark.

And I just, I kept moving things into rooms and I kept going and I kept going

and I was running on adrenaline and looking at the clock. I got three hours.

I got two hours. I got one hour. I'm just trying to get, I'm just trying to

get mattresses in there so they have somewhere to sleep.

And I'll never forget, I was walking through the living room and it's getting

dark outside and there are these windows in the living room.

And I just fell on my knees and started crying.

And I said, God, what am I doing here?

What am I doing here?

I can't move my family into this place. And my phone rang.

Didn't recognize the number. I picked it up. And the guy on the other end was,

we called him in Vermont, the godfather of church planting.

He was the guy who planted first.

He started a movement of church planting in Vermont.

And he said, hey, how you doing?

And I didn't want him to know I was crying. So I'm wiping tears off my face

and trying to sound good.

And I said, hey, moving stuff in.

He goes, well, I don't want to keep you. I just wanted to call and tell you,

I'm so glad you're here. Vermont needs you.

And now I was really crying. He says, he says, Vermont needs you here and God's going to use you here.

And I just sat there and listened, had the phone out here. So he couldn't hear me crying.

And I pulled it together enough just to say, thanks, man.

He says, all right. We'll talk later. All right. Hang up.

Got up off the ground and I was able to finish what I was doing.

Second story, 2020 COVID lockdown division, people leaving.

And I was so discouraged. I was walking down the hallway of our upstairs in

our house and And spur of the moment,

I'm walking past the bedroom, and I just walk into the bedroom,

and just like however many years before,

eight years before, I fall down on my knees in my bedroom, and all I could get

out of my mouth was, God, encourage me.

God, encourage me.

God, encourage me. And my doorbell rang.

Thought, well, nobody, nobody visits anybody on lockdown. So what's this?

I got up and I walked downstairs and I didn't see anybody through the glass and opened the door.

And there's a big basket of baked goods with a note on top. And I look up and

there's two young ladies driving off, waving, honking the horn.

And I picked up the basket and I walked inside and I'm opening the note.

And I don't remember what the note said. I just know that note and that basket

of baked goods was from God.

I knew right then, this is the God of encouragement.

He sees me. He hears me when I cry out to him and say, I just need you to encourage me.

Friends, I hope you know God as the God of encouragement because he is. Let's pray.

Father, thank you that you are our encourager.

Thank you that you do hear us when we cry out to you and that you don't beat

us down in our discouragement, that you come and you lift our heads and you

remind us of the covenant.

You remind us that you are forever, for all of eternity, committed to us.

You are with us. You'll never leave us. You'll never forsake us.

You are our God forever, and we are your people.

Lord, whatever each person in this room is facing right now,

no doubt, every single one of us is facing our own unique discouragements,

would you lift our heads, not only for ourselves,

but for our brothers and sisters around us, so that we could speak encouragement to them.

We ask it in Jesus' mighty name. Amen.