Deliverance Has Its Own Timing: Lesson #2, Part 2

Lesson: Sometimes deliverance will to be delayed for reasons that have nothing to do with you directly.  Unbeknownst to you, God might be completing His agenda elsewhere so that He can answer your prayer today. What feels like a delay is actually God’s perfect timing.

Example: The Canaanites

When God called Abraham to move from Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan (modern day Israel) He promised to give Abraham and His seed after him Canaan as an inheritance. Thus the genesis of the phrase ”promised land”.

Canaan & Mesopotamia

So Abraham moved his family to Canaan in obedience to God. In the book of Genesis chapter 15 God gives him a vision. In the vision God reveals/prophesies to Abraham the following: (Genesis 15: 13, 14 and 16)

And God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve and afterward they will come out with many possessions…Then in the fourth generation they shall return here for the sin of the Amorite/Canaanite is not yet complete. “(NAS)

Remember…this prophecy was given over 100 years before Abraham’s son Jacob took his family to Egypt to avoid famine in Canaan.

But why 400 years? Why so long?

There are two very good reasons:

Modern Day Israel

1. Though God had promised the land of Canaan to Abraham’s seed (Israel), Abraham’s family was not large enough to possess the land. It took 400 years for the people of Israel to grow to over 2 million people and thus be ready to possess the land God had promised them.

 2. God is fair, just and, fortunately for us, full of mercy. God gave the Canaanites 400 more years to repent of their sins and get right with Him. Only after the 400 years could Israel possess Canaan. In fact Israel was God’s hand of judgment for the Canaanites as later Babylon was God’s hand of judgment for Israel.

Today…

…we can see in hindsight how God was working over a long period of time to fulfill His promises to Israel and deliver them from the hands of their oppressors.

Even as I write this blog I am myself convicted to cultivate more patience when I pray. I need to learn over and over to trust God and believe that he will keep His promises in His perfect timing.

Chag Pesach (Happy Passover),

Joel Chernoff

~The views contained in The Joel Chernoff Report are not necessarily views held by the MJAA~

Deliverance Has It’s Own Timing: Lesson #2, Part 1

Part 1:

We all have needs and pray to God for Him to deliver us from various crisis like a bad job, sickness, financial difficulty etc. Israel’s great supernatural Passover deliverance from enslavement and oppression in Egypt taught me something very valuable.

Lesson: My deliverance or answer to prayer, in some cases, may be much more complicated than I originally thought and may involve a series of behind the scenes maneuvers by God in order for that deliverance to arrive on my doorstep. Therefore…keep praying and try to be patient!

Israel’s Passover deliverance from Egyptian oppression is a great example.

Israel’s deliverance involved not just them but also Egypt with all of its political and economic complexities as well as the people and land of Canaan (the Promised Land) which was where Israel was going once they left Egypt. 

Traditional Route of the Exodus

 Check this out… 

At first they were treated with great favor because of Jacob’s son Joseph who helped the Pharaoh of his time to deliver the whole nation from famine and disaster. Subsequent Pharaohs, however, failed to appreciate this and gradually the Jewish people were looked upon as a vast non-Egyptian populace to be exploited for economic gain. The Jewish people became the slaves (forced workers) that drove the economy of Egypt. This is similar in many ways to the experience of African slavery in US history.

Mighty Egypt Humbled! 

The Great Pyramids of Egypt

By the time Moses approached Pharaoh with the demand to let Israel go, Egypt had become the most powerful empire on the planet. The Egyptians also had an elaborate system of idol worship complete with a pantheon of false gods. In order for the Jewish people to be delivered from Egyptian oppression God would first have to humble and yes humiliate mighty Egypt and in particular their proud King–Pharaoh. This He did through a series of plagues that increasingly exacted such a toll on Pharaoh and his country that he eventually was compelled to let Israel leave Egypt.

The cost benefit to holding on to this vast economic labor pool of 2 million plus people called the nation of Israel was just too high.

Passover Lesson Revisited

I’m really preaching to myself when I reiterate that our much sought after and prayed for deliverance may involve God moving some big things around in our lives and the lives of others that we are almost certainly not aware of.

Although deliverance can seem to be instantaneous, in most cases it involves a preparation process just as God prepared Pharaoh to let Israel go.

Tomorrow I’ll share more about this as we explore the people and land of Canaan and how Israel’s deliverance could not have happened before it actually did.

Joel Chernoff

~The views contained in The Joel Chernoff Report are not necessarily views held by the MJAA~