During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. (Exodus 2:23–25, NIVUK)
‘God doesn’t seem to hear.’
‘I pray and nothing happens.’
‘Prayer isn’t changing anything.’
Many of us have experienced what seems like the absence of God. And it is hard.
Groans to nowhere
When life is difficult, there are a range of ways we can call out to the Lord:
- Sometimes we pray earnestly and expectantly, we bring our reasons, we plead God’s promises to him. We spend time with the Lord. Our prayers are ‘thought-out’ prayers. But no obvious answer comes. God does not appear to be stirred.
- Sometimes our prayer is more of a crying out in need. Perhaps we are grieving, or depressed, or despairing – our struggles and sorrows so engulfing that we can’t think it all out with the Lord – we just want relief. So, we cry out. Our prayers are ‘cries-of-need’ prayers. We are praying but our requests are simple: Help! Deliver! Send relief! Change things! But still there doesn’t seem to be any answer. The relief doesn’t come. God seems out of earshot.
- There can be times in our crying out when we aren’t even thinking about God. It doesn’t feel like prayer – we might even see it as sinning – because we are just groaning. The car gives trouble on your way to an appointment (‘this is all I need’), you’re just dozing off at 4am after a night up with a sick child and you hear the cry go up (‘argh, not again’), you get a cold, or sickness, or aches and pains and mutter ‘I feel awful today’. We might call these ‘groans to nowhere’. We face life’s burdens, and we sigh, we moan, we breathe out our sadness and frustration. And we expect no answer from God because we haven’t really sought him out.
The children of Israel were somewhere between these ‘cries-of-need’ and ‘groans-to-nowhere’. Exodus 2:23 says that they ‘groaned’. They would come home after a day on an Egyptian building site, bone-tired, dispirited, frustrated at their masters’ unreasonable harshness, sore, blistered, and hungry. They would get up tomorrow and do it all again. And they cried, ‘please get us out of this’.
God’s silent response
They may have felt as if they were crying into thin air but wonderfully their groans came up to God (v23). We can be inclined to think that it is only our ‘thought-out’ prayers, or those sincere ‘cries-of-need’, or prayers that are cleaned and tidied up enough that will reach the Lord. Few of us would think that those expressions that aren’t even worthy of the name ‘prayer’ – our cries and sighs, our moans and our groans – come up to God.
But they do. And more than that, look at how he responds:
First, he hears. His ear is open to their cry. The idea is that he listens thoughtfully. We utter exasperations, and he hears intelligently.
Then he remembers. ‘And God remembered’. God remembers his covenant. It’s not that he ever truly forgot them, but God hears a groan, and he calls to his mind his commitment to graciously and abundantly bless his people.
Now that he remembers, he sees. ‘And God saw the people of Israel’. And it isn’t just seeing. It’s giving attention to them in such a way that he understands their need and their struggle. He sees the oppression and he doesn’t just hear a sigh, but he knows the burden of the heart beneath it.
And God knew. He cares, he is concerned, he has compassion. He enters into the groaning of his people. He knows them intimately and he has them on his heart.
God heard, God remembered, God saw, and God had compassion. Here is a beautiful, personal, revelation of God. But notice something important. God is about to reveal himself at the burning bush as ‘I AM WHO I AM’. Then on the mountain he will announce Himself to be ‘The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God.’ At the bush and on the mount, God speaks. He is heard. But in the slave labour camp, He is not heard. We only get to know about God’s response because Moses the author tells us. The poor, burdened Israelites had no idea this was how God was responding. So much was happening in the heavenlies. But down in the labour camp, God seemed silent.
A disproportionate grace
They will not stay unaware of God’s activity forever though. Think of what was about to happen to the children of Israel: a phenomenally powerful setting free of a vast number of people from slavery. Here they are now, groaning to nowhere, and God answers with spectacular generosity in the Exodus, coming near in fire and cloud and tabernacle to make his home among them, and to bring them into their inheritance. This is disproportionate grace. They sigh in exhaustion – maybe doubt that God is ever going to act – and then heaven comes to earth.
What’s more is that this all gets enhanced in Christ. God now hears through his Son, who intercedes for us into the ear of God. God now remembers a New Covenant, in which his people are bought by the blood of his Son. God sees our need now as God-become-flesh. And God now knows, cares and feels with the perfect sympathy of our great High Priest.
The desperate sighs of believers reach the ears of God.
Are you struggling today with prayers and cries that seem to go unheard? Where in life do you find yourself just groaning under the weight and pain of it all? God can seem silent. But much is happening. God’s extraordinary plans are in motion even now.
Lord, give us eyes to see, and hearts that wait upon you. Thank you for a grace that overwhelms our need, in Christ.