I Am the Lord—Learning to Speak the Word of God

Will we trust the Word of God or defer to the experience of people?

The Word of God is powerful. We believe it. These eight verses from Exodus today are packed with powerful declarations from the mouth of God. Seventeen times he says some form of “I am” or “I will.” Let’s slow it down for the play-by-play:

‘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 with mighty acts 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 out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.
And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob.
I will give it to you as a possession.

I am the Lord.’”

People of God, do you know what that is? That’s Plan A! It is the unstoppable, unalterable, undefeated Word of God. 

This is nothing short of incredible. It would be difficult to be more reassured by the Word of God than one would be in this instance.

So, how is it that we find ourselves feeling defeated and losing the race so much of the time? That’s Plan B. Plan B is our broken experience of a fallen world corrupted by sin and being desecrated by death. We hear the Word of God (if we actually “hear” it) through the framework of our own experiences—our experience of life, the world, sin, death, brokenness, betrayal, failure, success, trauma, pain, deception, disappointment, our strengths, our weaknesses, our Meyers-Briggs personality type, our Enneagram number, and a thousand other things.

In light of their slavery and most recent episode of making bricks without straw, the Israelites, including Moses, allowed their experience of Plan B to override their faith in Plan A and the Word of God: “Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor” (v. 9).

Though the power of the Word of God is to the power of our experience as the power of the sun is to that of the moon, somehow, the gravity of our experience manages to tip the scale all too often. The Israelites’ powerful experience of “discouragement and harsh labor,” though clearly inferior to the power of God’s Word, overcame their confidence in the Word of God: “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the Israelites go out of his country’” (vv. 10–11).

The experience of early failure in the mission also tipped the scale on Moses’s confidence in God’s Word. He regressed all the way back to his faltering speech excuse: “But Moses said to the Lord, ‘If the Israelites will not listen to me, why would Pharaoh listen to me, since I speak with faltering lips?’” (v. 12).

The Word of God is just that: the Word of God. Our experience as human beings is just that: our experience. The thing that tells the difference is the quality of our faith. Will we offer faith in the face of our faltering experience? Will we trust God’s Word anyway?

The tumor is malignant, and the cancer has spread. The marriage is irreconcilable. Your son or daughter has forayed into a socially affirmed yet biblically forbidden lifestyle. Will we place our faith in the Word of God or defer to our experience and that of others?

When we allow our broken experiences, our disappointments, and our discouragements to speak louder than the Word of God in our lives, we slowly sink into the ruts of Plan B and assume this is just how it’s going to be. It is imperative in these moments to give voice to Plan A, which is God’s Word in our lives—out loud. Yes, give voice—your voice—to God’s Word. Every word written in the Bible has been decreed by God. It is now ours to declare. This literally paves the path of deliverance. It’s why God’s Word declares about itself things like this: 

Thy Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. (Ps. 119:105)
It is more precious than gold; than much pure gold. (Ps. 19:10)
It is sweeter than honey; than honey from the comb. (Ps. 19:10)
It always accomplishes the purposes for which God sends it. (Isa. 55:11)
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Heb. 4:12)

And here’s my favorite:

The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the Word of the Lord endures forever. (Isa. 40:8)

Okay, do you have time for one more from Jesus?

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. (Matt. 24:35)

Faith in the Word of God leads to another kind of experience. Given time and patient trust, faith in the Word of God leads to the indelible, life-changing experience of the faithfulness of God to the promise of his Word. All of this will form the curriculum for the people of God for the next forty years.