Midweek Lenten Worship March 4, 2026
“From Bad to Worse to Best” Exodus 5-11
Rev. John R. Larson Ascension Lutheran Church Littleton, Colorado
Murphy was an optimist. Mr. Murphy was the man who said, “If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong, at the worst possible time.” Sometimes in life we just shake our heads and say, “He doesn’t know the half of it.”
The people of Israel were told that God was going to deliver them from slavery. And Moses, the “Who Am I To Go To Pharaoh?” man, went. “Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’ But Pharaoh said, ‘Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.’ (Exodus 5:1-2) That’s it. His answer was no. You may know that this Pharaoh was a different one than in the early chapters of Exodus. That Pharoah wanted to exterminate the Jews. His decree was to kill the boys immediately after birth or drown them in the Nile. This Pharaoh had a different view. Let them live and work them to death.
Things were bad for the Jews. They made bricks. Millions of them. The pyramids at Dahshur used 24.5 million bricks. I read that this work was physical torture. You worked every day from sunrise to sunset. Every day. No vacation. No holidays. Every day. Historians said that brick layers arms, shoulders and legs were rendered useless within twenty years because of the bone-crushing work.
But the life for the Jewish worker went from bad to worse. Pharaoh did not appreciate this visit from Moses and Aaron. A three-day vacation? This was Pharaoh’s hardline response, “The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foreman, ‘You shall no longer give them straw to make bricks, as in the past; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But the number of bricks that they made in the past you shall impose on them, you shall by no means reduce it, for they are idle.’ Therefore they cry, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God.’ Let heavier work be laid on the men that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words.’” (Exodus 5:6-9)
You had to have chopped straw to give bricks their strength and flexibility. Without the straw bricks lost their shape and became useless. Now they had to go and find straw.
It went from bad to worse for the people of Israel. But you know who really got the brunt of all this? Moses. After Pharaoh’s hard words the people of Israel held a meeting with Moses, “The Lord look at you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.” Then Moses turned to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me?” (Exodus 5:21-22)
I bet you have had situations that were bad and you didn’t know how you were going to handle them. And then before you know it, it got worse. What do I do now? Can this be resurrected? Can there be any hope?
The people of Israel and Moses, their reluctant leader, were ready to pull their hair out. But God wasn’t defeated. He hadn’t met His match. He wasn’t ready to simply roll over. God says, “Moreover I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant.” (Exodus 6:5) The covenant, the promise that God made, said, “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to a land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3)
God doesn’t forget what He says. He keeps His word. He was not done yet. Pharaoh took things from bad to worse. God was going to make things better – even the best.
God showed His deliverance for His people in a powerful way. 10 plagues. Some of them were gnats, flies, hail, locusts and darkness. I have said more than a few times in my life, “That is just an ordinary day in Nebraska.” The plagues came to show Pharoah and Egypt and all of the world that there is only one God and He holds all things in His hand.
How did Pharaoh react to these powerful signs? Repentance? Change? Coming to a knowledge of God? No. “So Pharaoh’s heart remained hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.” (Exodus 7:22) Murphy’s Law, for Pharaoh, took on a greater meaning. Everything went wrong not just for him, but especially in him. His heart went bad. It became hard. It resisted every word that God wanted him to hear.
When Murphy talks to you, I want you to listen to a greater word. It is God’s word. It is the promise of His covenant – both the Old Covenant that He kept and the New Covenant that He sends in Jesus. He fought the battle for you and He won. He still battles for you. On Holy Thursday and Good Friday, it went from bad to worse. Betrayal, denial, darkness over the whole land, “He bowed His head and He died”. But on Easter the better and the best happened. Angels came with brilliant light and Jesus rises from death.
And your heart, which can become fatigued, He can make new. In the Old Testament word from Ezekiel, God promises us, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26)
From bad to worse to best, that is the journey of our life. This is our story. This is our song. God, wonderfully, is writing our story. We turn our lives over to Him. Amen!!
