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The way God answers prayer

We often pray, having specific answers in mind, only to find that God answers those prayers in ways that are unexpected and even disappointing.

Lessons from the Exodus

A prime example of this is in the case of the Israelites who were laboring under the oppression of Pharaoh. Exodus 2:23-25 says,

Now it came about in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died. And the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage rose up to God. ²⁴ So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. ²⁵ God saw the sons of Israel, and God took notice of them.

God’s answer was to bring Moses to birth. But Moses was eighty years old when he delivered Israel from Egypt (Exodus 7:7). How many Israelites died without seeing their prayers answered? When Moses had been trained fully as a shepherd in the land of Midian, God appeared to him at the burning bush and said:

⁹ Now, behold, the cry of the sons of Israel has come to Me; furthermore, I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them. ¹⁰ Therefore, come now, and I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.”

No doubt the Israelites wanted a deliverer, but we can only imagine how frustrated and disappointed they were at the long delay. When Moses finally came to Pharaoh to demand the release of the Israelites, the situation only got worse. Exodus 5:7-9 tells us that Pharaoh increased their labor by telling them to get their own straw to make bricks.

Then the ten plagues began. The people were again disappointed that they had to wait for ten plagues before they could leave Egypt. No doubt many thought that one or two plagues would be sufficient. But Exodus 10:1 tells us,

¹ 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.”

As early as God’s appearance at the burning bush, God had told Moses that He would harden Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 4:21). Hence, this was a revelation to Moses, but not to the Israelites as a whole. How many Israelites could have handled this revelation? Would not most of them have questioned God as they continued to make bricks? To them, each day was another delay that impacted them severely. We today read the account from our armchairs without really putting ourselves in their shoes.

Even so, we have our own challenges, our own bondages, our own delayed promises. So the Israelites’ experience does have relevance to us in our own ways.

The Delay of the Feast Days

Once the day came for the Israelites to leave Egypt, the pillar of cloud led them to Mount Sinai, rather than to the Promised Land. What should have been just a few days’ journey turned out to be much longer. How many Israelites grumbled about this? We today can look back on it and understand the divine plan to establish the feast days, but they had no such revelation at the time. To them, it was just another delay.

God’s plan is revealed progressively as we walk it out. Later generations see the lessons from the past without fully understanding the difficult process that made it difficult for the previous generation to obtain that revelation. We know now that they had to wait for the 15^th day of the first month (Passover), 430 years after the promise to Abraham (Galatians 3:17; Exodus 12:41) and 400 years from the birth of Isaac, “thy seed” (Genesis 15:13 KJV).

It is doubtful that any of them remembered these promises or understood the timing inherent in them. God seems to cause us to forget the timing of promised events until the time approaches for those promises to be fulfilled. Perhaps this is to prevent whole generations from being discouraged, saying, for example, “We still have another two centuries to wait.”

Christ’s Comings

This is probably also the reason that God did not reveal the time of Christ’s coming—at least not in ways that they could understand. All they had was Daniel’s revelation of “seventy weeks” (Daniel 9:24), but yet their chronology of history was not very accurate in those days. No one could say for sure when the Messiah would fulfill Daniel’s prophecy.

In fact, they did not even realize that Christ would have to come twice. The Jews still do not have that revelation, even though the law reveals it in Leviticus 14 and 16.

Those who watch for Christ’s second coming have been kept in the dark as well, for God did not see fit to reveal how many years it would take (Acts 1:7). Some thought Christ would come in the year 1000; others thought He would come in 1844; still others thought He would come in 1917, or in 1948, or in 1988. Obviously, they were all wrong. It is only in recent years that any serious revelation of timing has been given to us, and even then, much has remained in relative obscurity.

The Promised King

In Genesis 49:8 Jacob prophesied that the king of Israel would come through Judah. But then all the Israelites went to Egypt, where they were enslaved for a long time. When Moses finally led them out of Egypt and formed them into a kingdom, they had no king for centuries. Each tribe was ruled by its own “prince” until the coming of Saul, a Benjamite.

They were unaware that the tribe of Judah was disqualified for ten generations (Deuteronomy 23:2) on account of the Tamar affair in Genesis 38. The people demanded a king in the ninth generation. David was the tenth generation from Pharez (or Perez), according to Ruth 4:18-22.

The delay caused the people to demand a king too soon, so God gave them a Benjamite to rule over them temporarily until Judah was qualified to provide a king for them. They did not understand God’s delays, and it appears that most of them had lost all hope. Before we judge them for their lack of endurance, let us reflect upon our own problem. Though we have greater understanding through the study of Scripture, there is yet much that we do not understand.

When Paul spoke of “the mysteries of God” (1 Corinthians 4:1 KJV), he said, “I know nothing by myself” (1 Corinthians 4:4 KJV). His counsel in 1 Corinthians 4:5 says,

⁵ Therefore, judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts; and then shall every man have praise of God.

We do not necessarily have to wait for the second coming of Christ, when all will be made fully clear, but we certainly should be careful not to judge things before all of the facts are known. We tend to think we know all of the facts necessary to come to a fixed conclusion. However, we should always recognize our limitations.

God’s Answers Can Be Strange

Timing has always been a problem, but the manner in which God answers prayer has always been another problem. When the Israelites demanded a king, it is likely that many of them thought that God would give them a king from Judah. Some objected (1 Samuel 11:12). Why? We are not told. But it is possible that many pointed to Genesis 49:8 to back up their view. If so, they were technically correct in their view of Scripture, but they were wrong because they were unaware of the ten-generation ban. In other words, they did not have the complete picture.

To get from Point A to Point B usually takes us through a lengthy unexpected detour. During such times, we must be faithful, enduring to the end. Our faithfulness is tested by the uncertainty of the path. We are led by the Spirit, but the light of revelation is given a bit at a time. It often looks like we are going in the wrong direction—and we may be technically correct. If we are supposed to go north, then why is the Spirit leading us south?

God does not often lead us along the path of least resistance. He does not usually lead us in the most direct route. The journey itself is designed to teach us things along the way, things we will need to know once we reach the promised destination. Understanding this goes a long way in giving us the ability to endure to the end.