Faith and familiarity: Why God’s people often struggle to trust God (Exodus 10–13)

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One trait of human nature that caught my attention in Torah reading בֹּא Bo (“come,” Exodus 10:1–13:16): belief. How we come to believe certain things is a complicated process.

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may perform these signs of Mine among them, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son, and of your grandson, how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I performed My signs among them, that you may know that I am the LORD.” (Exodus 10:1–2 NASB95)

In this passage, we see that our spiritual ancestors in Israel did not believe Moses and they don’t believe God through most of the plagues. God included the Israelites in the plague of locusts along with the Egyptians because the children of Israel still refused to believe that God was the one performing the miracles and that Moses was one that God appointed as His messenger to them. It wasn’t until the Israelites went through the Red Sea that they admitted that Moses was God’s messenger. The Egyptians themselves acknowledged God’s power and might and Moses before the Israelites did.

The pages of the TaNaKh¹ show us that even though the Israelites begrudgingly accepted Moses as God’s messenger after the Red Sea but in their action over the following generations, they didn’t really accept God’s authority wholeheartedly.

“Why then do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? When He had severely dealt with them, did they not allow the people to go, and they departed?” (1 Samuel 6:6 NASB95)

We see through the journey of the Israel in desert, through the ministry of Joshua, the Judges, the Davidic dynasty, the Babylonian exile, the people of Israel do not fully follow God. Even when the Messiah came, they were not following God, they rejected the Messiah that God sent to them.

Pharaoh’s advisers had more faith in God’s power and authority than Pharaoh or the children of Israel did. They warned him repeatedly from the plague of locusts onward that they were powerless over God, they humbled themselves, yet Pharaoh refused to humble himself.

The advisers were closer to the suffering of the people than the Pharaoh was. The Pharaoh was isolated and insulated from most of the consequences of his hubris.

It is only with the death of the firstborn of Egypt that the people of Egypt understood and respected Moses’ and his God before the people of Israel do. The Egyptian people had nothing to lose by admitting the truth and pushing the Israelites out.

However this character trait is not exclusive to the Israelites. I believe this lack of faith in God’s power is a trait common to most of humanity.

The Israelites had nothing to lose to accept God’s sovereignty and authority, yet they persist in rejecting God. Familiarity breeds contempt. Israel should have known better than the Egyptians, yet they did not.

The Gentile pagans recognized God’s power in Moses and the Israelites did not. We see the same pattern through Israel’s history, culminating in the Messiah Yeshua Himself, where the Gentiles saw God’s power working in Him while the Israelites rejected Him.

The pattern of Israel’s stubborn disbelief is a continuing narrative throughout the Tanak and even goes into the New Testament days. The pagans, such as the Egyptians, and the Philistines, were actually more humble and believing towards God than the people of Israel were even though the people of Israel were God’s chosen nation.

Messiah Yeshua even warned in Matthew 11:16-24 that Israel’s stubborn disbelief was worse than that of gentile reprobates of Sodom and Gomorrah. But stubborn disbelief in God is not a trait unique to the Jewish leaders in Messiah Yeshua’s generation. Stubborn disbelief in God is part of the human condition.

But God chose the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah and David to be his vessels of mercy on the earth, to be the forebears of the Messiah, why? I would submit that God saw stubborn streak in Abraham and saw it as a good thing, God Himself says in Genesis 17:18-19 that Abraham will teach his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice.

One way to look at it is that when children go to a neighbor’s house, they are on the best behavior but when they come back home, and they misbehave again. It’s like the old adage “familiarity breeds contempt.” When they are at home, they know what they can get away with.

You also find this in the common refrain that is repeated over and over again in the book of Judges that there was no king in the land so “everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” The Israelites end up in this cycle of famine, war and captivity because of their stubborn refusal to follow God wholeheartedly.

God recognizes this pattern of stubborn disbelief early on when He is calling Moses to lead the people out of Egypt. Moses told God that the children of Israel would not believe or accept God’s calling on him as a leader for them and he was right for quite a while. Moses performed the miracles with his staff and he was God’s instrument to inflict the plagues on he Egyptians, yet the children of Israel did not really respect Moses as their leader.

The Messiah warned the Apostles on several occasions that just as the Jewish religious authorities did not believe Him, they will not believe them either. When He was in the Jerusalem temple during Hanukkah/Chanukah, Yeshua was teaching, and John records this in the Gospel of John 10:22-42.

They were planning to stone Yeshua on the spot for blasphemy because He claimed to be God. He defends himself logically against this charge in two ways. He first quotes from Psalm 82:5 which states, “I said, “You are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High” and then Yeshua refers to His miraculous works, pointing out that an unrighteous person would not be able to perform the miracles He does in a state of sin.

It’s the same with Moses. God performed great miracles through Moses yet the children of Israel refused to acknowledge Moses. No matter what miracles Moses performed the vast majority of the children of Israel did not respect Moses at all.

Ordinary people cannot perform the miracles that Moses or Yeshua performed. They were able to do those miracles only because of the great power and authority God gave them.

So Yeshua calls them to think logically about what they have seen Him do before disparaging His character. The same is true for Moses. If they had thought it through, they could have worked through their persistent stubborn disbelief.

In Matthew 10:5ff, Yeshua gave His Apostles instructions as He prepares them to speak on his behalf throughout the land of Israel. He specifically tells them that they will be given the power to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. Yeshua goes on to tell them to perform these miracles “freely.” Yeshua is giving them the authority of God over not only the elements of nature but even over the demons and over life and death itself.

They were not allowed to bring anything with them, no doctors bag filled with herbs to heal the sick, no electric defibulators, right? All they had was the clothes on their backs and they had to depend on the kindness and hospitality of the people in the cities where they were traveling to take care of their basic needs for food and shelter.

He concludes these instructions saying,

“Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet. Truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city.” (Matthew 10:14–15 NASB95)

Ouch, that is quite harsh, isn’t it? Note that Yeshua did not send them to the Egyptians, the Samaritans. He sends them to the tribes of Israel, the stubborn ones. Yeshua is warning them that there are many people who will not believe their message, even though they are curing people of leprosy, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, etc. Yeshua goes on to warn His disciples that their own fellow Jews will be the ones to haul them into court, turn them over to the synagogues to be scourged and beaten because they are speaking His message. These people, the Israelites, they’re the stubborn disbelievers. They don’t believe the miracles that Yeshua and His disciples performed right in front of their faces. They won’t accept the evidence right in front of their eyes. Yeshua’s words are a harsh condemnation.

This persistent stubbornness is recorded through the entire text of Bibles. They don’t believe or acknowledge the obvious.

Yeshua repeats this point just a chapter later in Matthew 11, where it states,

Then He began to denounce the cities in which most of His miracles were done, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. Nevertheless I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descend to Hades; for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day. Nevertheless I say to you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for you.” (Matthew 11:20–24 NASB95)

Tyre and Sidon are not Israelite cities. They were Phoenician cities, which came from a gentile, pagan, human sacrificing culture. Yeshua says plainly to the people living in the Israelite towns of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernum that if He had performed all His miracles in those pagan gentile cities, they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes. They would have completely humbled themselves and acknowledged that Yeshua miracles were signs of His divine authority. They would have seen the works, even though they would not have fully understood His role as the Messiah. For the Israelites, that would not be good enough. They continued to persist in their consistent, stubborn disbelief.

This pattern also existed in Moses’ day as it’s recorded all through the Torah how the children of Israel repeatedly asked Moses “Is God really with us?” They didn’t believe God, they didn’t believe Moses. They rejected Moses’ authority on many occasions. This was the never ending cycle for 40 years.

I don’t have the answer as to why this is the case, but it seems that the pagans seem to be less stubborn than the Israelites. I don’t understand it but I find it fascinating. This pattern is not just the problem of one generation, but of many generations throughout Israel’s history from the Exodus to the time of Yeshua’s ministry and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple.

The most obvious signs, the miracles are not good enough for the Israelites. Yeshua specifically says that stubborn disbelieving people who clamor for miracles are a wicked generation. Why? Because He had already done many miracles and they refused to believe those so their request to see more miracles is disingenuous.

God Himself calls Israel stubborn and stiff-necked on many occasions throughout the Scriptures. He is not slandering them. He is telling the truth because God is truth.

The good side of Israel’s stubbornness is the reason we even have the Scriptures at all. They recorded them, and copied them from generation to generation. Stubbornness can be useful when it’s a stubbornness that spurs us to stand firm in what is right, but when we use stubbornness as an excuse to persist in doing and acting in ways that are contrary to God, this is a problem.

Summary: Tammy