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Judges 2:16-18
Have you ever noticed that God tends to intervene when His children suffer. It’s not always right away. When the Hebrew Children were in Egypt as slaves, they were there for quite a while. If you do all the math – and I’ve read and checked up on this, they actually spent about 144 years in slavery. They were there a total of around 430-450 years, but remember when they first lived in Egypt, prior to the years of slavery, they lived as refugees. My point is this – and we are going to read bout it before we get to our main Scripture today – when they were enslaved they cried out to God. And this is what the Bible says about that.
Remember Moses had ran to the wilderness to avoid prosecution for killing a slave master who had beaten a Hebrew slave. During that time he takes a wife, has a child, and eventually will see the burning bush.
Exodus 2:21-25 (NIV) Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.”
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.
Did you hear what the Scripture says, that God heard their groanings – then He remembers His covenant – and became concerned about them.
Let’s look at our text, from the book of Judges for this morning.
Judges 2:16-18 (NIV) Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of these raiders. Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. They quickly turned from the ways of their ancestors, who had been obedient to the Lord’s commands. Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for the Lord relented because of their groaning under those who oppressed and afflicted them.
Again we read that God hears their groaning and that God relented because He hears them. So we can come to the conclusion that God hears…God hears His Children, when they cry out.
I have some dear friends in the Roman Catholic Church. And when they pray together as a congregation, they offer up prayer requests. Sometimes it’s the priest, other times it’s a person in the congregation praying their request to God in the service. Here is what is awesome, at the end of each one of the requests, those who are in agreement say together, “Lord, hear our prayer.”
I realize that I’m not Roman Catholic – and I’m not saying I’m going to be, but I do have a few friends who are witnesses to Christ, and who walk in step with the Holy Spirit – and the Holy Spirit just oozes out of them who are in the Roman Catholic Church. And when I participate in a mass and hear this, something in my spirit jumps - in a good way. And I believe it’s because they are acknowledging that what they are saying together is heard by God. And not only that but they are asking God to listen to their prayers.
When we cry out to Him from our hearts – He listens. Our world needs us to cry out together today, to genuinely cry out to God – and we can do just that.