In football, the aim of the game is to score more goals than the opposing team. This is not as easy as it sounds, but at least there is a fixed point in that aim. The ball has to cross the line and go in the net in order for a goal to be scored.
For those of us with limited ball skills, scoring a goal even when there’s an empty net and no one trying to stop us is a hard enough task! For others, the enjoyment of the game is partly to do with proving your skill against opponents who are equally skilful.
But it’s a fair game because the rules are fixed. It would be vastly different and much more difficult if the goalposts, the net, were to be moved actually during the game and you never knew quite where you were supposed to be aiming to score that elusive goal.
One of the tactics used in oppression is to keep moving the goalposts. When Moses went to face Pharaoh and ask that the Israelites be allowed to go and worship God for three days, Pharaoh’s reaction was hostility. (Ex 5:1-18) Far from listening to him and believing, he decided that the ‘goalposts’ for the Israelites should be moved, so that the same quota of bricks made by the slaves had to be made without giving them the straw to make them, thus giving them additional work. That same tactic is used by many employers today. No additional pay is given, but additional work is piled on (usually because an employee has left work and not been replaced in order to ‘save money’). Or the ‘goalposts’ are changed so that the work itself is different (teachers facing new specifications or new measures for evaluating ‘standards’ on the governments’ whims face this on a regular basis.) The goalposts of a contract are changed subtly, unobtrusively, piling on the work until the worker is completely broken down, stressed, miserable and unhappy.
Not surprisingly, the Israelites were not happy about this worsening situation. Moses had promised deliverance and rescue, and they were now facing worse conditions than before. They had appealed to Pharaoh’s overseers in the proper manner (Ex 5:15-16), only to be told they were lazy! (Ex 5:17-18) (Another common work tactic is to blame the worker, no matter how unreasonable the demands made.) Now, their anger and frustration spills over to Moses: ‘May the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.’ (Ex 5:21)
It is a biblical pattern that God’s call and vision do not lead to instant improvement, gratification or fulfilment, that there is often a ‘testing time’ between the promise of God and its fulfilment. Nicky Gumbel, in commenting on Ex 4-6, says ‘then all the battles started and things got worse instead of better’! It’s at that point we are most easily tempted to give up. No one really wants to be obnoxious to those who have authority over us and the power to make life even more difficult than it already is! Moses went back to God in frustration: ‘Why, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Is this why you sent me? Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all.’ (Ex 5:22-23)
Perhaps this is why there is so much emphasis in the Bible on the need for us to persevere. If we read this story in the present tense, not knowing the outcome of the rest of the book of Exodus, we would probably give up at this point. Moses has tried. And failed. The Israelites are still slaves. They’re actually in a worse position than before, because they’re having to make the same number of bricks but have to go looking for their own straw as well. End of story.
Except it isn’t. To borrow an operatic analogy, ‘it ain’t over till the fat lady sings.’
Even when we feel things are getting worse rather than better, God urges us to keep hoping, keep trusting, keep believing. His plan of salvation and deliverance wasn’t about to be thwarted by any attempt to move the goalposts which Pharaoh dreamt up. His plans for our lives and our church will not be thwarted, no matter what it looks like at this moment, on this page of our story. God continues to work, often behind the scenes, invisibly, until that moment when His salvation and deliverance break out.
If you’re at the stage where it’s getting worse rather than better and you can’t see a way out, don’t give up. If the enemy is pouring lies into your heart that are wrecking you, call to God for deliverance. God will bring the victory. (‘Deliver Me’, Aaron Shust)